The appetiser for the Premier League's return will be served up this weekend and one of the most mouth-watering items on the menu will be found at Pride Park in the shape of Nigel Clough against Darren Ferguson. The sons of two of the greatest managers ever seen in English football will continue their own quests to make it to the biggest stage in the game where their fathers competed ferociously two decades ago.
It is Clough v Ferguson - the Millennium edition- and over a glass of wine there will no doubt be a wander down memory lane by the duo in Clough jnr's office, when the dust has settled on Peterborough's trip to Derby County.
There is so much for them to discuss. But doubtless high on the list will be January 7, 1990, a pivotal day in the career of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Skipping through the football annals now and seeing the bare statistics of United's 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup, thanks to Mark Robins's goal, might seem to the casual observer a meaningless statistic.
Yet it will be remembered by supporters of United and others with long footballing memories as the day the course of history was changed and Ferguson launched himself and his club upwards on a power curve that shows no sign of taking a downward trajectory.
Yet it all could have been so different. Manchester United might not have gone on to dominate the game almost to the point of boredom and Ferguson might not be regarded by his peers as the Godfather of their profession if Forest manager Brian Clough had been victorious that day.
Clough snr, who loved wrecking reputations across the football spectrum to help him enhance his own, had Ferguson's career in a vice-like grip and the world's media attention was focused harder than the Hubble Telescope on the City Ground.
Clough had never won the FA Cup and he loved rubbing the big boys' noses in it from his unfashionable station alongside the banks of the River Trent.
As an extra incentive, he would have known it was possibly Ferguson's final throw of the dice at Old Trafford too. Everyone seemed to know.
Three years after moving south from Aberdeen and carrying the heavy burden of achieving results demanded by a club with such great tradition, the Scot was struggling just above the relegation zone in the old First Division and had already been eliminated from the League Cup by Tottenham.
Eye contact in the boardroom was minimal and the Stretford End was rapidly reaching the end of its tether. It was widely regarded as Ferguson's last hope of salvation. Defeat against Forest, according to the general consensus, would have brought a premature end to Ferguson's time at United.
"Everyone says that was the case. If we had gone out of the FA Cup that would have been our season over and people have drawn their own conclusions. I think it's become more significant over time because of Alex Ferguson's achievements at Manchester United," Robins once recalled
"I had no idea what the situation actually was at the time. I was only young then. I was just coming into the team, trying to hold down a place in the squad. That's all I was concerned about. I think it was all probably a little bit over my head at that time, because I was just concentrating on myself. I was a naïve young lad. It was probably a good thing."
Nigel Clough remembers the bitter taste of defeat that day, but uses it as a fantastic example of how football should learn a lesson about the increasing lack of patience with managers.
He says: "At the time you never know the significance of Robins's header. It shouldn't have been down to that goal and it just shows how fickle football is. If they'd lost he still shouldn't have gone. And you've got to give people time.
"He hadn't been there long but you have to look sometimes beyond immediate results and I just think my dad had great respect for how Ferguson has gone on since then."
Robins was certainly a good thing for Ferguson. United went on to lift the FA Cup, after a replayed final against Crystal Palace, the first of Ferguson's catalogue of trophy successes that included his second Champions League success in 2008.
That victory over Chelsea meant Sir Alex finally had an answer to one of Brian Clough's jibes. Until then, for all the mutual respect, Clough, winner of the old European Cup twice with Forest, often ribbed Ferguson for not having two of what he had, with the quip "and I don't mean balls!"
Clough managed at Forest for the same length of time Ferguson has been at Old Trafford and his son often wonders what his mercurial father would have done at a more fashionable club with far greater resources.
"He worked on pennies compared to big clubs, but his knowledge was immense and his football principles so strong and simple," said the Derby manager.
"I often wonder how it might have been if he had been at United for that length of time with all that backing. I don't think many managers could have done as well as he did at Forest with the funds he had."
At the age of 43 and 37 respectively, Clough and Ferguson have followed similar low profile entries into the managerial world as their fathers.
Learning the tools of the trade and putting in the hours at ground level was always their fathers' approach. Now Derby v Peterborough represents their sons' first contest as managers.
If it is anything like the ones their fathers shared over seven years, let's hope it is the first of many.
