At the height of their club’s ferocious rivalry with Manchester United, in the early to mid-noughties, Arsenal fans had a long list of enemies at Old Trafford. There was Roy Keane, who warred with Patrick Vieira. There were the Neville brothers, who “literally kicked José Antonio Reyes off the park” (Phil’s words). There was Wayne Rooney, who was accused of diving for a penalty when United ended the Invincibles’ 49-game unbeaten run in 2004.

But when it came to sheer hatred, there was one United player who stood alone in the eyes of the Arsenal faithful: Ruud van Nistelrooy. Few figures in Premier League history have provoked such loathing from one fanbase and, ahead of Arsenal’s meeting with Van Nistelrooy’s Leicester City side this weekend, for many of their supporters that disdain remains strong today.

“He was definitely the most hated opposition player at the time,” says Akhil Vyas, of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust. “He was the one we absolutely could not stand. You would think that Arsenal fans would really hate someone like Keane – he was their leader, the captain, and the one we should have really disliked. But it was Ruud. I can’t stress how much we disliked him.”

To look back at that era now is to see how much has changed in English football. There are modern-day rivalries and derbies, of course, but few come close to the extraordinary level of bitterness and distaste that defined Arsenal versus United – and Arsenal versus Van Nistelrooy in particular – in those days.

Younger Arsenal fans, for example, might point to their current rivalry with Manchester City as evidence of a similarly feisty culture clash. Really, though, it does not compare. The biggest talking point from the last two meetings between Arsenal and City has been an 18-year-old mimicking Erling Haaland’s celebration and the City players complaining about Arsenal’s style of play. Against the hatred on show in the mid-noughties, such incidents look like little more than playground squabbles.

‘Van Nistelrooy is a cheat and a coward’

As an example, consider the strength of Vieira’s words in his 2005 autobiography. On Van Nistelrooy, Vieira wrote: “Ruud van Nistelrooy is a cheat and a coward who is sneaky in the way he goes about fouling other players. Everyone thinks he is a nice guy but, in fact, he’s a son of a b----. At Arsenal, we hated him and had real reason to do so. He’s a great player, but everything about him annoys me.”

Clearly, these were different times. For Arsenal and United, and also for the Premier League, which was in the process of becoming the global monster it is today. It could be argued that the incidents involving Van Nistelrooy, especially, were among the most important in the league’s development into an entertainment behemoth.

The animosity truly began in September 2003, when Vieira was sent off at Old Trafford for kicking out at Van Nistelrooy. The Arsenal captain did not make contact with the United striker. The Arsenal players therefore felt they had been cheated. “Maybe the referee didn’t see that I didn’t touch him but Van Nistelrooy gave the impression that I did,” Vieira said later. Arsène Wenger called him a diver.

Arsenal’s fury towards Van Nistelrooy was made clear when the Dutchman went on to miss a late penalty. The Arsenal players, with Martin Keown memorably at the front of the action, jumped all over him in scenes that eventually resulted in four suspensions and the club receiving a record fine of £175,000.

“What Martin Keown did is what every single fan would have done,” says Vyas. “We lived that moment through him. I remember the next day the media and opposition fans were shaming Arsenal, but we were defiant. We backed our team, and Van Nistelrooy was the number one target as the villain of the piece.”

Relations were to worsen further a year later, when Van Nistelrooy scored the penalty that Rooney won with an alleged dive in a 2-0 win for United that ended Arsenal’s historic unbeaten run. In that game, now known as the “Battle of the Buffet”, Van Nistelrooy committed a horrific tackle on Arsenal’s Ashley Cole — his boot connecting with Cole’s knee — that got him banned for three games. So bad was the challenge that Cole’s agent threatened legal action.

Wenger, meanwhile, said of Van Nistelrooy: “What is he doing getting involved in silly things? There was another occasion in the second half when he steps on Jens Lehmann on purpose. He always does it like he’s innocent.” Van Nistelrooy said in 2021 that he felt it had become “personal” with Arsenal.

This particular fire was further fuelled by Van Nistelrooy’s battle in the scoring charts with Arsenal’s Thierry Henry. In back-to-back seasons from 2001 to 2003, there was only one goal between them in the race for the Golden Boot. Van Nistelrooy later admitted to checking Arsenal’s results to see whether Henry had scored. “It was always Henry or Van Nistelrooy at that time,” says Vyas. “We backed our man.”

All these years later, does the rivalry still exist? Perhaps not for younger supporters. When Van Nistelrooy took his PSV team to the Emirates in 2022, he joked in advance that he should be given a “warm welcome”, but was largely met with indifference on the night.

“I think as time has gone on, there is a new generation of Arsenal fans who might not really remember,” says Vyas. ”We played PSV and at the Emirates you would not have really noticed. There was no real reaction to him.

“If he was managing United it might reignite some of it, but managing Leicester is a totally different thing. He has become irrelevant. He has ended up in a relegation battle, which shows he is not quite relevant as we go for titles under Arteta.”

But for a certain generation of Arsenal fans – and indeed a certain generation of Arsenal players –hose emotions will always remain. Given that history, it might not take much at the King Power Stadium this weekend for passions to be ignited again.