Arsenal v Manchester United started in slow and cagey fashion, but certainly didn’t finish that way as the Gunners’ recent miserable record in a competition they once dominated continues alongside United’s nascent resurgence.
1. An absolutely first-rate FA Cup Sunday, you’d have to accept. The grand old tournament may be bedevilled these days by unpleasantness like ’11 changes from the side that…’ and Big Bad Jurgen Klopp stealing our replays, but it can still deliver.
For a good chunk of this game, though, it appeared that neither Arsenal nor Manchester United were that keen to play their part on a day in which Spurs threatened to outSpurs themselves in surely untoppable fashion before Newcastle fell briefly behind at home to Bromley before the resumption there of normal service.
By half-time in this one we had three ideas for possible conclusions here and they were all variations on a theme of Utter Woke Nonsense. When Arsenal wearing their enormously well-intentioned but nevertheless undeniably snow-blindingly irritating to look at all-white kit had a goal disallowed for offside by a linesman (except we’re not even allowed to call them that any more, are we?) wearing gloves we wondered if the game had ever been more gone.
2. And then we discovered that there was a special gold-trimmed ball being used in this game because Manchester United are the FA Cup holders and we’re sorry to report our heads fell clean off. Luckily, though, the gold-trimmed ball looked absolutely sh*t and thus a terrible idea was redeemed entirely. On TV pictures at least, the gold detail had a distinctly brown appearance and suggested not so much a very special ball for the very special holders but a forecourt flyaway that had been patched up with parcel tape.
We were so delighted about that we’ve even left it as the second conclusion when it should if anything have been lucky to remain anywhere near the conversation for 16th. We will not be apologising for that at this time.
3. From very early in the second half it became clear that we would not need to be scrabbling around for 16 Conclusions or indeed just quietly binning the idea altogether and denying we’d ever agreed to something so silly. A lacklustre, cagey, chess match first half (all things which are unconvincing code for ‘sh*t’) in which our only actual note that came close to being about football was one about Mikel Merino completing only seven passes had given way to something far better. Something far more what we had in mind for a clash between the competition’s two most successful ever clubs. Something far more befitting the proud history of bad-tempered, niggly contests between these two fine clubs.
We looked at our hands. We had a cup tie on them.
4. For the neutral, United taking the lead was obviously the ideal kind of thing. And after a first half spent mainly in watchful, organised defence reasoning quite correctly that they were perfectly capable of frustrating a powder-puff Arsenal attack, United hit the second half with renewed vigour and greater energy.
The breakaway from which they took the lead was a lovely piece of work, with Alejandro Garnacho’s canny pass smacked home with precise menace by Bruno Fernandes. Replays confirmed the suspicion that it was one of those where a little bobble actually serves to tee the ball up perfectly for the oncoming player, but it still needed plenty of finishing from Fernandes.
5. The game inevitably opened up from that point as Arsenal sought to channel their frustration. United’s biggest problem was not so much Arsenal’s potency as the number of yellow cards they’d accrued among their more defensive players.
It started to look like a red card was unavoidable. And sure enough, that red card arrived. But it was enormously avoidable. We would simply love to know what thought process Diogo Dalot went through before throwing himself into an entirely needless challenge right in front of the Arsenal dugout having been booked just 12 minutes earlier and seen his team take the lead just nine minutes earlier.
There’s never a good time to fling yourself into an unnecessary tackle having just been booked, but this was egregiously stupid given the state of the game and the shift in momentum. United’s opener had rocked an Arsenal time operating some way below maximum confidence levels. It could have cost his team everything.
6. And looked certain to do so just two minutes later. This may not be an Arsenal side firing on even most of its cylinders at this time, but they are still a side that can sense a moment. This was it. A weak punch from Altay Bayindir – we’re not sure we quite agree with the Proper Football Man assessment that he should’ve just caught it, but he definitely should’ve punched it properly at the very least – left Gabriel with the chance to make amends for being caught out for United’s breakaway by firing a deflected shot into the bottom corner.
7. Arsenal’s best spell followed. They upped the previously funereal pace and went at United. And their reward appeared to have come when Harry Maguire was harshly adjudged to have hauled Kai Havertz to the floor in the penalty area.
Cue redemption for Bayindir, who dived to his left to superbly save Martin Odegaard’s spot kick. This was one to test the maxim that if you get a penalty right there is nothing the keeper can do. It was very much a penalty saved rather than a penalty missed.
But the old-school melee that followed the award of the penalty, one that really ought to have featured Martin Keown and Ruud van Nistelrooy, and the subsequent miss rather spiked Arsenal’s guns. There wasn’t quite the headloss that appeared likely to descend but they never regained the steamroller momentum they’d built up over the previous 10 minutes, while United were reinvigorated and had visibly renewed belief.
8. Once the game had reached extra-time, the scale of United’s defensive effort was already enormously worthy no matter the outcome. This was a second game running at a deeply difficult ground where there was significant evidence to suggest Ruben Amorim’s training ground instructions are starting to get through, that this squad is starting to get the hang of what he’s asking them to do.
It was certainly a useful time for Matheus De Ligt to have his best Manchester United game after a difficult introduction to life in England, and the defensive clearance he sent over his own bar a yard from goal having muscled his way past Leandro Trossard to get there first when a goal appeared certain was his best individual moment in United colours.
We’re huge fans in general of the recent trend for defenders to celebrate preventing goals with the same enthusiasm attackers celebrate the scoring of them, and the sight of De Ligt in full-throated red-faced roar clutching the net was one to stir the senses.
9. Care must be taken with how this success is framed for United and Amorim. Even going all the way and winning the damn thing provided only a series of false dawns for Erik Ten Hag and this group of players. But it doesn’t feel like a time for care. Coming on the back of that effort at Liverpool it is a second piece of compelling evidence in the last week that things are slowly but surely changing after a harrowing run of results.
That United even find themselves in a place where a couple of draws feel so vital is a reminder of how far they done fell, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real progress nevertheless. In the last couple of games United have been unrecognisable, especially in defence, from the rabble that shipped four at Tottenham and three at home to Bournemouth and against whom corners had become so deadly you didn’t even need to bother with the faff of involving a second player after the taker.
10. But for Arsenal, it’s a familiar story. Both this season and more generally. Focusing purely on this season, it’s a further reminder – one that we’re pretty sure not one person actually needed – of how desperate the need for a striker has become.
Arsenal and conspiracy theories are rarely far apart, and we’re entirely willing to believe fully in one where Kai Havertz’s performance today was in fact a selfless one-man mission to loosen the transfer kitty pursestrings, a humiliating sacrifice for the greater good.
For all United’s much-improved defending and Arsenal’s struggle to find a reliable route to open-play goals, it is genuinely mystifying how Havertz failed to get his name on the scoresheet with more than one of his misses falling into the often referenced but rarely actually occupied ‘easier to score than miss’ category.
11. This was then capped off in the penalty shootout. If there was going to be one man to miss there was only ever going to be one man to deliver. It was such a miserably weak penalty, as well. At once summing up Havertz’s own misery-strewn day and also Arsenal’s own shortcomings across the years back into the late Wenger days.
The problem with Havertz’s penalties, you see, is that he literally tries to pass them in.
It was so weakly struck that even being right in the corner couldn’t rescue it, Bayindir completing his zero-to-hero arc by getting across to save with almost embarrassing ease.
12. And yet it was a penalty that we have to assume would still have had a 50-50 chance of going in had it been taken against Arsenal’s keeper. Everything about David Raya suggests a keeper who should be well-suited to the one-on-one combat of a shootout, and he earned his money in helping Arsenal even make it to penalties with a stunning reaction save from Joshua Zirkzee’s wickedly deflected shot in extra-time.
But he had an absolute Shilton of a shoot-out. Shilton’s infamous inability to save penalties ever in shoot-outs owed much to a strongly-held but entirely delusional belief that he could react to the penalties in real time rather than rely at least to some extent on anticipation, homework and, frankly, guessing a little bit like every other keeper who has ever lived; Raya’s approach was arguably even more misguided, his strategy of committing so early that United’s penalty takers could choose to change their minds if they so wished proving predictably ineffective.
13. And then we come to the more wide-angle problems for Arsenal than their keeper having a bit of a weird penalty shootout or even the immediate need for a striker. The chances of Mikel Arteta picking up a second trophy have taken another serious hit here, and having played for so long against 10 men at home it’s one that will take a fair bit of getting over.
There wasn’t even the Carabao excuse of being against a team who do have an elite and brilliant Proper Striker like Newcastle do.
Arsenal aren’t yet out of that one, of course, but the chance of the Gunners winning by at least two clear goals against a team in Newcastle’s current form appears decidedly far-fetched. Failing something deeply unlikely there early next month, Arsenal are left relying on a Liverpool collapse in the league or an elusive first Champions League crown to avoid another year slipping away with nothing in the trophy cabinet to show for their general excellence and profound improvement over the last three seasons.
It remains a comical absurdity that the one trophy Arteta has managed to win during his transformative reign as Arsenal manager was in his very first half-season with Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery’s squad.
14. For a club with an unmatched history in this competition, Arsenal’s recent record in it is now one to spark concern. There is bad luck in drawing Liverpool and Manchester United in round three as they have in the last two seasons, but to lose both those ties at home in error-strewn fashion is deeply irritating and only part of a wider trend.
Since that 2020 win in this competition Arsenal have now failed to go beyond round four in five attempts, a record unacceptable to any half-decent Premier League club but particularly one for whom 2020 marked a fourth success in seven seasons.
15. What a lovely moment that winning penalty was for Joshua Zirkzee. His brief – and it may never get beyond brief – United career has been a horribly difficult and challenging one, but even if it never has anything much else to commend it, it will always have a goal that knocked Arsenal out of a cup. There are worse things to be remembered for as a United player.
16. And while the ruckus, the rumpus, the set-to – the melee, if you will – after the penalty decision never truly felt complete in the absence of Martin Keown and Ruud van Nistelrooy, there was still time left in the day for both men to get involved.
An unsurprisingly sour-faced Keown was one half of the crack fourth-round-draw team alongside Mark Schwarzer, and the first tie out of the hat was Manchester United against Van Nistelrooy’s Leicester.
It’s one that gives Van Nistelrooy the curious and surely vanishingly rare opportunity to manage in four domestic games in one season between the same two teams, while taking charge of each team twice. He currently boasts a 100 per cent record after league and Carabao wins against Leicester during his interim United stint, and it’s hurting our head trying to decide which team if either that is now actually good news for.
