Arsenal and Manchester United will be going head-to-head this Saturday at Emirates

Jesse Lingard celebrates his second goal with team-mate Romelu Lukaku during Manchester United's victory over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday evening Credit: Action Images

This was the first great 21st century fixture of English football, a top-of-the-table millennial rivalry that delivered great games, warring personalities and the occasional red card so, for all the lustre it might have lost, it was splendid to see those memories honoured with a true classic.

Somehow Arsenal lost this with 74 per cent of the possession and 100 per cent of the defensive mistakes, but for all their failings they made it a great game just as soon as they had gifted Antonio Valenica and Jesse Lingard a goal apiece in the first 11 minutes. By the end Lingard, in one of the performances of his life, had scored another and Paul Pogba had been dismissed for an atrocious foul on Hector Bellerin.

Yes, this was a game to evoke the days when these two teams divided the league title between them in the most bad-tempered fashion possible. Alexandre Lacazette scored Arsenal’s goal to get them back into it at 2-1 but unfortunately for the home side they ran into David De Gea in the kind of form where his shot-stopping is so exceptional the United goalkeeper almost feels like an unfair advantage.

More