As the race for the Premiership has got tighter, the exchanges between Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger have reached new levels of intensity and vitriol. The wars of words are often described as mind games but the managers of Manchester United and Arsenal have recently found a more basic level of sparring.
Public arguments about Sol Campbell's elbow in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's face during the titanic encounter between the teams 10 days ago have become personal and accompanied by accusations of dishonesty and violence. Wenger reignited the flames yesterday with another attack on Solskjaer after Campbell's appeal against his sending off was rejected and, as the pressure rises, there will be more of the same.
Exchanges like these, which have regularly passed between the two men since Wenger's arrival in September 1996, are frequently characterised as Machiavellian attempts to improve the morale of players and upset opponents. Perhaps that is the conscious intention but you would not expect a shrink to settle for something so simple and, anyway, if you don't believe me, how about that noted Sigmund Freud of the terraces, Graeme Souness?
He says of the mind games: "Managers are doing it mostly for themselves and maybe because it's what they think the supporters want to hear. The players just laugh it off - they did when I was playing and they still do." Like Professor Souness, I suspect the deeper purpose of these spats is to express the managers' pathologies. That Wenger and Ferguson are men of contrasting method and philosophy is clear; that their respective backgrounds have forged their approach to conflict perhaps equally so.
Current circumstances serve to acutely illustrate the contrast in approach: both men are being tested to the limit. The tension surrounding this season has grown still more now that the championship is the major remaining target for both teams. As the end-game approaches, both men's public pronouncements are probably more designed to unsettle the other than to affect either set of players. Having seen Kevin Keegan crack up in the face of his verbal chicanery, there must be few things Ferguson would like better than to witness Wenger lose his cool.
But that is highly unlikely and, in fact, Ferguson is more at risk of boiling over. After Wednesday's tutorial in mesmerism from Real Madrid, the Premiership is his last throw of the dice this season. For Wenger, there is still the FA Cup and anyway, he is so phlegmatic and philosophical his work will never get to him as it does to the excitable United manager.
You might suppose that the two managers are merely very different types who find each other irritatingly different, even threateningly so, and when they comment on each other their mutual antipathy slips out. But the Premiership now has a great variety of contrasting managerial styles and it is hard to think of any other adversarial couples who have become enmeshed in regular tiffs. That the last memorable one was between Ferguson and Keegan is a clue to what is really going on.
In 1996, Fergie famously managed to get under Keegan's skin, with the then-Newcastle manager almost reduced to tears. Prior to that, when manager of Aberdeen, Ferguson was also often engaged in public aggression towards the mighty Celtic and Rangers, playing the underdog. But rather than concluding that he would to employ such tactics ever after because they worked, I suspect it is more a case of him having a deep need to joust, dating back to a tough childhood.
At a simple level, the taunts between the pair are a form of class war. When, in 1997, Ferguson asked of Wenger: "What does he know about football, coming from Japan?" he was only using the overt, confrontational style of a working-class Glaswegian. Ferguson also has the conventionally manly, willy-waggling bravura of his background. Last year he said: "We have played the best football in England, scored the most goals." Wenger's retort perfectly illustrated their difference: "Everyone thinks that they have the prettiest wife."
This slyer, more covert and comedic form of self-assertion is what we might expect of a middle-class man with a university degree in economics. It also reflects a more middle-class notion of how to be a man - less directly adversarial, keener to win arguments by similes and cold logic than by verbal punches to the jaw.
According to Ferguson, his father was "a strict disciplinarian" and he puts a lot of his success down to a guidance imposed with an "iron fist". His father was a Clyde shipyard worker and Ferguson wrote that "the Clyde made the man and that man made me". Ferguson says his brother Martin "used to batter me...we used to fight like cat and dog" and, when not fighting with him, Ferguson's school hours were punctuated by abundant scrapping.
Such a hard childhood often results in both depression and violence in men but Ferguson managed to channel them into football. The unfortunately aimed boot that cut the Beckham eyebrow - after defeat to Arsenal in the Cup - suggests words remain sometimes insufficient to express his anger.
Cold logic
None the less, he has long since ceased to be physically violent. Rather, his childhood will have left him expecting to be attacked and the interesting thing is the extent to which our early experiences still govern our adult expectations.
Recent studies suggest we will go to great lengths to try and recreate our childhoods in our choice of lovers and friends. Above all, we will provoke or manipulate people to behave in ways that conform with our childhood experiences. If little Ferguson was forever liable to be attacked, then trying to pick verbal fights could be his way of making the present familiar.
On top of that, Ferguson seems to have resolved his father's aggression to him by identifying with him - in his mind saying to his father: "I share your beliefs and authoritarian personality so there is no need to bully me." This unconscious tactic puts him in the driving seat and now, when someone is being bullied, it is no longer him.
Highest standards
I suspect players quickly recognise this portrait: a perfectionist man, like his father, who will dominate at any cost and demands the highest standards. But some of this is also feeding his relationship with Wenger. Almost certainly, Ferguson sees Wenger as someone who is a threat and needs to be outwitted. But on top of that, deep down Ferguson probably sees the Frenchman as a weak, effeminate, duplicitous "bad" person who needs to be taught a lesson in the importance of discipline.
And what of Wenger who had a middle-class childhood spent in Strasbourg in the Alsace region of northern France? Little is known of his early experiences. However, there is every reason to think they were not as traumatic as Ferguson's. His parents owned a bar/restaurant and to judge by his reactions to his rival's provocations, he is not easily made paranoid, suggesting he was not the object of much aggression.
Unlike Fergie, who is sociable, widely knowledgeable and has many hobbies, Wenger has few interests outside football. He lives with his girlfriend, Annie Brosterhous, their young daughter, Leah, and a huge flatscreen TV in north London.
Football mad from childhood, he discovered a love of teaching while at university. Unable to achieve more than a few appearances for Strasbourg himself, he decided to teach others how to do it instead.
He is not easily moved to anger, an urbane, considerate and cerebral man who has rarely lost his temper in his six years at Arsenal. When asked if he hates Ferguson, he said: "I have no hate for anybody." It really does seem to be true that he feels no personal animus towards Ferguson.
United's manager usually provokes the verbal jousting but, while it may possibly have helped Ferguson when he was at Aberdeen and probably did work against Keegan, it is of no concern to Wenger.
Above all, as a memorable Premiership year comes to its end, nothing that either says in public will be likely to affect the outcome.
· They F*** You Up - How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James is published by Bloomsbury (£7.99)
Ferguson on Wenger
April 1997
'He has come from Japan and now he is telling us how to organise our football. He should keep his mouth shut. Firmly shut'
July 1999
'From the moment it was announced we wouldn't be in the FA Cup there had been complaining noises from other clubs...The rest got on with their business once the decision was irrevocable but not Arsenal or their manager'
February 2003
'Intelligence! They say he is an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages. I've got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages'
March 2003
'Overconfidence is a failure in people and there is no doubt about it, they are overconfident. When you are that full of yourself - as Arsenal are - it can come back to haunt you. It is a dangerous game and you wouldn't catch us acting like that'
April 2003
'I understand Arsène Wenger defends his players - he does it all the time and I've done it myself. But when your players have had 49 red cards under you and have been involved in lots of elbowing incidents you have to look at yourselves'
Wenger on Ferguson
November 1997
'He doesn't bother me. Perhaps the more sensitive can be affected...I understand his passion and if I get under his skin then that is good'
November 2001
'His club has such potential they will continue to be tough no matter who comes in after him... They have the money to buy a good manager, the money to buy good players. It will go on'
July 2002
'I would have liked to have signed Rio Ferdinand, but for £10m less'
March 2003
'I don't know whether he likes me or not - I don't know him well enough and those things don't worry me'
March 2003
'When United won the treble they seemed to have somebody upstairs who just decided to give them all three'
April 2003
'If you ask me to name United's two essential players, I would still say Beckham and Scholes - even now. They perform at a very high level but I possess a balanced side with 20 players of great quality'
Yesterday
'Over 180 minutes against Real Madrid you can say that Manchester United were never in a position to qualify. Not for one minute.'
