BY OLIVER HOLT ( The Times )

After the game, Alex Ferguson, the United manager, was unstinting in his criticism of his side. He said they had "tiptoed" through the game and he was right. His players looked like ballet dancers trying to wrestle body-builders, humiliated and slapped around. It is a while since they have been outclassed like this.

After some of the dreamy football that they played against Barcelona last Wednesday, United seemed as though they were sweating their way through a nightmare. They were tentative, their passing was poor and Ferguson's experiment of playing Ryan Giggs in attack alongside Dwight Yorke did not work.

Even Peter Schmeichel, the goalkeeper who for so long has been beyond reproach, is going through a spell of damaging uncertainty that for the first time is raising questions about whether age is dulling his ability. It was his failure to reach a free kick from Stephen Hughes that allowed Adams to power home a header for Arsenal's opening goal in the fourteenth minute.

After Nicolas Anelka had put Arsenal further ahead by beating Jaap Stam's feeble attempt to play him offside, United lost all hope of recovery when Nicky Butt was sent off for the second time in four days, attempting to halt one of a thousand surging runs from Patrick Vieira.

Arsenal were better in every department. Adams, more imperious than ever, brought Yorke's recent run of league goals to a shuddering halt by reducing him to a bemused, if annoyingly nonchalant, bystander. In midfield, the absolute dominance of Vieira raised questions about the extent of Roy Keane's recovery from injury and in attack, even the still-stuttering partership of Anelka and Dennis Bergkamp asked a series of awkward, largely unanswered questions of Stam. Only David Beckham deserved credit among the visitors.

It is too early in the season, of course, to talk about a result like this establishing one of the two presumed championship protagonists above the other, but it was such an emphatic victory that it will surely give Arsenal a psychological boost for the marathon ahead.

If these teams who contested the championship so fiercely last season and graced different halves of it with long periods of scintillating football had failed to approach the same standards so far in this campaign, Arsenal put that right yesterday. United, meanwhile, will have to face the wrath of their manager before they can attempt a new beginning against Liverpool at Old Trafford on Thursday.

"They earned their right to win the match by sheer effort," Ferguson said, seething with quiet anger. "We were second-best in every challenge and it was really disappointing in all respects. The sending-off might have affected the result a bit, but it does not change the fact that they were better than us. They wanted to win more than us and as Manchester United manager that is not something that I would like to see. It will not be repeated."

As United retreat to their training ground at The Cliff to try to regroup before the visit of Liverpool, Arsenal, who began to hit their stride during their Champions' League draw with Lens last week, will undoubtedly use the victory as a springboard to help them to try to emulate the achievements of last season. They had not won for five games before yesterday, but they are above United now, safe in the pack chasing Aston Villa.

If Bergkamp rediscovers his best form then they will be hard to rein in. Everything else in their formidable unit is beginning to function as it should and in Hughes and the Swede, Fredrik Ljungberg, who scored the third goal five minutes into his debut yesterday, they have fine reserves who can deputise when others are absent, as Emmanuel Petit was yesterday.

"We got our game back against Lens last week," Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said. "Before that we had a few doubts in our mind about our game."