In September 2002, Alex Ferguson was a media punchbag. Manchester United were eighth in the table after their worst start to a Premier League season. Arsenal were the nation’s darlings and plenty of usually good judges thought Ferguson was past it. In his Daily Telegraph column, the former Liverpool defender Alan Hansen said Ferguson was facing “the greatest challenge of his career”.
You didn’t need a degree in Fergie to know what this comment would do to his temperature, especially as it came from a former Liverpool player. "My greatest challenge is not what's happening at the moment," he said. “My greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch. And you can print that."
Liverpool’s perch slowly became part of the football lexicon, and the legend grew that Ferguson had knocked them right fucking off it. But it was not a popular view in the Gunners pub or the Highbury Barn. The people there argued that Arsenal’s titles in 1989 and 1991 were symbolic moments in the end of Liverpool’s 20-year dominance of English football, and that if anyone knocked Liverpool off their perch, it was George Graham.
