James Lawton: Ferguson prepares his last stand as the real season starts here

The Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon asserts that a rational number of truly professional – and competitive – English clubs would be 40. Naturally, most football lovers, who dream their dreams about the ultimate rise of their own favourites, are outraged. They would not be if they stopped to consider for a moment the implications of today's huge match at Old Trafford between United and Arsenal.

Kenyon projects two leagues of 20 clubs. Reality is rather more savage. It tells us that the big league has already hived off 17 no-hope contenders, give or take Claudio Ranieri's manful attempts to impose genuine consistency at Stamford Bridge.

As it stands, though, the big league consists of today's Old Trafford rivals – and, maybe, faltering Liverpool.

Sir Alex Ferguson's euphoria at Anfield last weekend, when the implosion of Liverpool's goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek helped United to a rare victory over their Merseyside rivals, included the statement that his team were "back to their best". Fergie the supreme optimist would say that and, crucially, he would possibly believe it, but the real point was that United had won the first game of the season which, on the evidence of last season, truly mattered.

Ferguson's pleasure was that the league table within the league showed United back on top with a record of won one, drawn none, lost none.

It made thrilling reading after the pain of last season's standings, which finished: Arsenal, played four, won three, drawn one, lost none, 10 points. Liverpool, played four, won 2, drawn one, lost one, 7 points. Manchester United, played four, won none, drawn none, lost four, no points.

That, when you put to one side the inevitable slips which come to the best of teams in the course of a season, was the story of the Premiership. Arsenal finished first, Liverpool second, and United third. Note the difference in the mini-league points between Arsenal and United: 10. Now guess the divide between the Big Two in the full table. Right, 10 points.

So, for a shining moment or two at least, United can be seen to have turned back an oppressive trend. They have moved from bottom to top of the game's inner circle and for Arsenal the need to re-exert the huge edge which came with victories at Old Trafford and Highbury – the 3-1 home win, despite a rush of blood to Fabien Barthez's head, was a particularly striking example of their new conviction and poise and brought praise even from Ferguson – is unquestionably the single greatest challenge of a domestic season they threatened to consume rather than merely dominate.

It is hard to overstate the value of victory today to Ferguson and Arsène Wenger, the man who tracked United so guilefully through the 1990s and now, some feel, may be about to make the break that would confirm his rival's fate of a place in the margins of the big time at the end of a glorious career.

The ferocity of Ferguson's resistance to such a denouement has been announced dramatically enough ever since the tide began to flow against him, so unexpectedly, early last season. His investment of nearly £30m in Rio Ferdinand was surely the act of a man confronted by a loss of many old certainties. Now, with a total of £78m wrapped up in the injured – and somewhat demythologised – Ferdinand, the chronically under-delivering Juan Sebastian Veron, and, preciously, the magnificently firing Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ferguson could well be marking out the ground of his last stand.

That he will do it with great passion today is one of the game's easiest assumptions. That, and the fact that Wenger will be expecting definitive performances from his three most compelling current performers, whose combined cost is a stunning £6m less than that of the skilled but desperately peripheral Veron.

Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Sylvain Wiltord have shown luminous form recently and the potential they carry today goes beyond the mere acquisition of three vital points and the re-establishment of Arsenal's advantage from last year. They can, at a psychologically pivotal point of the season, announce the triumph of the Wenger way over that of Ferguson.

It is the difference between the entrails and the intellect, the mind and the heart, and the great irony of defeat for United today would be that Ferguson, the ultimately driven manager, had been pushed further into a corner by a team who have added to all their other assets the quality that has so largely created all his own success – a driving, relentless hunger.

Ferguson chose to see a revival of that edge of ambition in victory at Anfield, but more objective witnesses had reason to be sceptical. It was a poor match, many notches away from United's old authority and the hard view had to be that it was the charity of Dudek that was most influential.

But then a win is always a win and its value is redoubled when you are fighting for your competitive life. In the context of the Premiership's little big league, that has surely never been more true. Now Ferguson can only hope that more time can be bought in the continued absence of Roy Keane, Nicky Butt and Ferdinand. There has been a suggestion that the promising young defender John O'Shea might be drafted into midfield to provide some weight and vigour against the remorseless capacity of Vieira to dominate the course of a game, but if the youngster has made some impressive strides recently you have to suspect this might be more a leap into a chasm.

What cannot be disputed is the depth of the meaning of victory or defeat, and the impact of one or the other will only be heightened by the degree of rivalry between the men who seek to orchestrate the action. Their styles could scarcely be more different, but Arsène Wenger and Alex Ferguson come together today at a rare point of agreement. Neither can afford to countenance the idea of defeat. In arguably the smallest competitive football league outside of Glasgow, this is not so much the match as the season.