Arsenal aren’t generally known as a club that constantly start brawls, fights and riots, but that just makes the occasions where things do kick off all the more memorable.
Arsenal players are generally more likely to come off the pitch with an injury than a red card, and the fans will more often leave the stadium early to catch the last train than to wait outside the away end for a fight. However, let’s have a look at five times when that wasn’t the case:
1Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane
To this day, Patrick Vieira is still the player with the joint-most red cards in Premier League history, with eight in the competition. Roy Keane isn’t far behind though, with seven of his own. Unsurprisingly, clashes between the two players were a regular fixture of matches between Manchester United and Arsenal for a number of years.
The tension between the two also spilt into their interactions off the pitch, as emphasised in the famous Highbury tunnel bust-up in 2005.
According to Gary Neville, the fight started with Vieira shouting “Neville, Neville… You’re not going to kick our players out on this pitch today!”
Roy Keane overheard and started having a go at the Frenchman, and Vieira responded by squirting his water bottle in Keane’s direction. After that, it all kicked off, with shouting and swearing and the referee having to hold the Manchester United man back. All this before the game had even begun!
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