Ruben Amorim gets his statement win as Manchester United show spirit to down Arsenal
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Manchester United’s last FA Cup victory ought really to have marked the end of one manager’s tenure. This one, with the same hindsight, may come to prove the hard launch of another. The soft equivalent had come at Anfield last week, where Ruben Amorim’s side found a performance from nowhere to come within a blazed Harry Maguire effort of taking Liverpool’s scalp.
It came, though, with caveats and questions. Could they go again, or was it a made-for-TV one-off?. With a spirited rear-guard display here at the Emirates, United answered in emphatic style, the holders knocking Arsenal out of the FA Cup with a penalty shootout triumph that gives Amorim the statement victory on which to hang his regime.
After an hour, they led, through a counter-attacking moment of quality from Bruno Fernandes that may well have been enough to settle the tie against an Arsenal side in their usual mode of dominance without threat. Diogo Dalot’s brainless dismissal for a rash challenge on Declan Rice while already on a booking, though, gave Arsenal a way back in and left United clinging on, playing the second half of 120 minutes a man down.
They were breached, but only once, by Gabriel’s leveller. Maguire produced his best performance in recent memory to lead the resistance, his surprise redemption arc now close to complete. Matthijs de Ligt followed in the former captain’s considerable slipstream with surely his finest display in a United shirt.
And the hero, perhaps destined to become a cult figure now, was Altay Bayindir in goal, who saved penalties from Martin Odegaard in normal time and then the hapless Kai Havertz in the shootout. A 5-4 victory echoed Arsenal’s in this fixture in the final 20 years ago.
