FA Cup Final (scores)

sleepwalker

ah yes here comes the bitterness

lauren is a hero

Headshot

sleepwalker wrote:

ah im a happy man after that win, arsenal are ridiculously good at peno shootouts pity about the rest of the performance

bring on next season so arsenal can get that premiership back

teams are robbed when a bad decision goes against them etc when they dont convert the chances they get it is entirely there own fault

At lest united were the best team in the end even though arsenal won on penalties

case n basket

Man Utd Win(United fans)

{(-_-)}HeadShoT** wrote:

hmm the only way ye can beat united is by penalties

Probably explains why United have been so hard to beat at Old Trafford over the past decade then

Headshot

Big Ears wrote:

Penalties .

claps hands :rolleyes:

Thanx 4 The Fish

Man Utd Win(United fans)

United have been lucky before, eventually it has to run out. It did today and you came up against a keeper on good form too.

In the end a poor pen by Scholes lost it, nothing else.

LegacyUser

ROBBED. Absolutely Robbed. **** it anyway. Arsenal are not better than United. Pity it had to end in Peno's. I'd rather be played off the field and lose 3 - 0. Todays game reminded me of the West Brom game all over again. Could not finish!!!!!!

zAbbo

Arsenal came above United in the league, and beat them in the FA Cup, clearly ManU are head and shoulders above them

Those Glazier United strikers couldn't score in a barrel full o fanjita's

elbow316

Whats that?
A trophyless season and your third 3rd place finish in three years??



We didn't turn up at all , United put in one of their best performances of the season but still couldn't score in 2 hours of football.....its quite sweet really - Revenge is ours

A Dub in Glasgo

Arsenal Win

Not really a good game but United deserved to win it over 120 minutes of football rather than over 10 kicks of the ball.

Draupnir

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Not really a good game

??????

Wat game were you watchin?

A Dub in Glasgo

Arsenal Win

Draupnir wrote:

??????

Wat game were you watchin?

The same game as everyone else.

And it was not really a good game. One side could not even score with the barrowload of chances that came their way and the other side could not even get a shot on goal.

What game were you watchin?

Draupnir

give me a break man, it was a thrilling game with some excellent creativity from United and some excellent play all round. End to end stuff toward the end and I dont think anyone could get enough of it. A brilliant game so dont even try to say it wasnt because it was.

BUt I suppose when people becomed accustomed to SPL football, actually passing and running becomes bad.

zAbbo

The one were Manure had a buttload of chances, couldn'd score, lost on peno's to their rivals, and whinged at the end (rio/ronaldo), The one were Lehman was on a diff planet, and yet the brits give the MoM to Rooney(sic)

/me does little dance

Its all just a kickabout until the REAL final on Wednesday

A Dub in Glasgo

Arsenal Win

Draupnir wrote:

give me a break man, it was a thrilling game with some excellent creativity from United and some excellent play all round. End to end stuff toward the end and I dont think anyone could get enough of it. A brilliant game so dont even try to say it wasnt because it was.

I'm sorry if my take on the final is not the same as yours but that is how I see it. Poor finishing from 1 team and poor forward play from the other team. The best thing that could have happened to the game today was Arsenal getting an early goal. It would have opened the game up a lot earlier.

BUt I suppose when people becomed accustomed to SPL football, actually passing and running becomes bad.

Deflect away all you like. I would rather see a thrilling game like the '79 final any day rather than poor finishing and poor forward play like today.

Draupnir

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Deflect away all you like. I would rather see a thrilling game like the '79 final any day rather than poor finishing and poor forward play like today.

you do realise thats one of the worst finals in history until the 87th minute right?

arsenal defend for 50 minutes and then it becomes the five minute final.

i have it on video so i can assure you i have a valid referential knowledge of the two games.

A Dub in Glasgo

Arsenal Win

Maybe it our different interpretations of thrilling or good then. To me (as a neutral) I would rather the FA Cup final that goes like

1 - 0
2 - 0
2 - 1
2 - 2
3 - 2

than

0 - 0 then decided on penalties.

Maybe it is just me but I saw very little to get too excited about today or maybe it is because it is hard to get thrilled too much when a person does not have a stake in the game and you see poor finishing and poor forward play and no goals.

Flukey

Glazer United think they were robbed? Well boys, let us remind you of the Champions League Final in 1999. The last 5 minutes of that should have been shown on Crimeline!

case n basket

Man Utd Win(United fans)

Oh, and just before the moment passes...

VIEIRA
WOOOOO OHHHH OHHHH
VIEIRA

Memnoch

pretty crap game, was dissapointed, neither team produced anything special apart from the odd moment here or there. Very uninspiring stuff indeed.

Cianan2

Man Utd Win(United fans)

I really enjoyed the game today, i thought it was exciting(maybe just me?)

Ronaldo was my MotM, because: Rooney did do great, but i noticed Ronaldo more than Rooney, and the commentators have a tendency to point out ANYthing that Rooney does as great unlike Ronaldo(one bad cross, is all i remember) He hassled Lauren for the whole match, agitated the sh1t out of him. Rooney had...what, 6/7 shots on goal, and a few nerve-wrecking(for Arse) runs at the defence....that post shot was genius though if he meant it!
Ronaldo was surprisingly more threatening on the left than ive seen him on the right!

Chucky the tree

Draupnir wrote:

give me a break man, it was a thrilling game with some excellent creativity from United and some excellent play all round. End to end stuff toward the end and I dont think anyone could get enough of it. A brilliant game so dont even try to say it wasnt because it was.

BUt I suppose when people becomed accustomed to SPL football, actually passing and running becomes bad.

seriously, what game where you watching? it was a poor game. I think most of the neutrals will agree that it was a poor game. A game that is so one sided cant never be "thrilling". End to end stuff? it stayed at the same end for nearly 90 minutes.

The only redeeming feature was penalties, even those where failry dull with only one being missed.

jesus_thats_gre

Man Utd Win(United fans)

To be honest Chucky, if you were a United supporter you would have been delighted with how United dominated Arsenal for the majority of the match..

Chucky the tree

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

To be honest Chucky, if you were a United supporter you would have been delighted with how United dominated Arsenal for the majority of the match..

of course i would of, but draupnir was claiming it was a great match, which from a united point of view it was(except the result of course).


But from a neutrals point of view it was a boring match.

LegacyUser

It is quite upsetting...

LegacyUser

Completely robbed but what can ya do? I hope this turns out to be a positive for next season...

Memnoch

cheesedude wrote:

Completely robbed but what can ya do? I hope this turns out to be a positive for next season...

how were United robbed? It's not like they had a legitimate goal dissallowed? or had a really bad decision given against them.

In the end dominating a game is irrelevant if you lack the ability to put the ball in the back of the net.

Big Ears

Arsenal Win

Just something on Scholes' peno , if Lehmann had dived the other way the ball would have ended up in the corner , everyone would think it was a good penalty and United fans would be happy thinking good old reliable Scholes , of course Lehmann guessed right and I think its fair to say it was a great save rather than a terrible miss .

redspider

An unusual FA Cup final between Man U and Arsenal. Man U were the better team, for a number of reasons, but Arsenal had the luck and stole it on penalties. The stats for this game do tell the tale with something like 15 shots on target for Man U and 10 off target (25 total) compared with Arsenal's 4 shots on target and 5 attempts off (9 total). That was a true reflection of the domination.

The match was unusual for this pair in the sense that it was cleanly fought and did not end in the petulant fouling and squabbling and arguing with the refs and the officials that these games have done in the past. I guess both sides need to be congratulated for that.

Arsenal were hampered before the start, as Henry missing from Arsenal is like playing with 9 players. He is that influential, although is usually less so against Man U. The second factor that hampered Arsenal was their formation. Playing with Bergkamp up-front as the target man was never going to work. Van Nistelrooy who was playing in a similar role at the other end of the pitch and who always plays in this role found it hard-going too. Reyes gave little forward support to Bergkamp and Bergkamp was double teamed. Pires did a bit better but has difficulty against good defenders. Arsenal with Reyes and Pires were weak in midfield.

Arsenal started well and had Man U "hemmed" into their own half, but this was only a false dawn, before the Man U tactic of GITCR (Give it to C.Ronaldo) came into play and stretched the Arsenal. Man U started creating chances and on any other given day they would have scored a goal, such as the one that was cleared by Ljungberg off the line. There were solid performances on both sides, such as from Lehman, and Senderos, and of course that battle between Ronaldo and Lauren was at times captivating. Keane had a very solid game and led well, as did Viera. For once Arsenal didnt miss Sol Campbell. Rooney did his bit at times, but in a way I feel Man U are hampered in terms of tactics by playing Rooney, Van Nist and Ronaldo. They have certain strengths to their game, very good ones individually, but as a unit they do not link as well as say an Henry, Bergkamp, Pires unit can.

Btw, I am always dubious of player ratings and the BBC website gave both Lauren and Berkamp a 4, saying: "Lauren - 4: Looked to push forward as often as possible but spent most of the match chasing after Cristiano Ronaldo. A difficult afternoon."

Yes, he had a very busy afternoon and wa under the cosh but he coped quite well. Ronaldo got past him only a couple of times with about 20 tries, so it wasnt the case of him being turned inside and out and given the fact that he had zero support from midfielders, I would hae said his performance was quite good, if not very good. If he hadnt done as well as he did, indeed Arsenal could have been run ragged.

They said: "Dennis Bergkamp - 4: Frustrating afternoon. All alone up front, unable to bring others into the game in the way he does so well."

I dont think you can blame Dennis for the role that was asked from him which a) is not in his skillset b) is something that Arsenal rarely play so the team are not set up for it and c) where the support players of Reyes and Pires were largely absent. Its true that Dennis's role did not produce but that was not his fault at all.

I think that Wenger was poor tactically without Henry and I dont think he did well as he didnt change the tactics at all when they were found wanting.

One small point, if Beckham was still at Man U and given that they got so many free kicks, it would have been very very likely that he would have scored a goal. Is Beckham then the factor that Man U were missing this season in converting domiance to victories? perhaps ....


Although Arsenal stole it, you could say that at the semi-final stage last year, Man U stole it from Arsenal, so lady luck in this case was doing a bit of balancing. Here are some stats from that 2004 semi-final as a reminder:

Arsenal Man Utd
Goals 0 1
Shots on 4 3
Shots off 9 0
Blckd Shots 4 3
Corners 9 6
Passes 433 330
Possession 57% 43%
Pass % 73% 69%
Fouls 17 22
Offsides 1 8
Yellow Cards 4 1


So, Man U end the season with no trophies. I hope that Liverpool dont join them with that unenviable statistic!

Redspider.

redspider

Chucky the tree wrote:

but draupnir was claiming it was a great match ...
But from a neutrals point of view it was a boring match.

As a neutral, I dont agree that it was a boring match. It was a good match between two good teams but one-sided, as Arsenal lacked an attacking tactic to break through the packed United midfield. Arsenal were trying to play through the midddle the whole game and it produced very few chances a moments of excitement.

It wasnt a great match. Even if some of the woodwork chances had gone in from Rooney and v.Nistelrooy, it would have been a good 2-0 for Man U. But not a great game.

Arsenal fans will feel relieved to have won, Henry was surprised with the look on his face, and Man U fans will feel peeved to some extent, but that is football. Man U have had fortune in the past and this was a balance to some extent by lady luck.

Redspider

TheMonster

As a United fan I am totally gutted but at least I can look forward to the new season with optimisim after a very good performance, on other days we could hav had 4. United have played a lot worse than that(even against Arsenal) and won. The only reason Ruud was kept on near the end as Fergie feared it going to penaltiies, he was jaded.

On the evidence of yesterday it is Arsenal and not United that need to a lot more work during the summer, take away one man and look at how inept they were.

Headshot

TheMonster wrote:

.

On the evidence of yesterday it is Arsenal and not United that need to a lot more work during the summer, take away one man and look at how inept they were.

good point

Arsenal need big improvements in summer to keep up with Man utd and Chelsea

smuckers

I thought Viera had a shocker, looks lethargic, v awkward ran into players, first sign of this guy going downhill was a couple of years ago when Parker hounded him like a little terrier, this guy has had a bad season but you know the saying form is temporay and class is permanent, its a bit obvious his mind is elsewhere though.

TwoShedsJackson

Man Utd Win(United fans)

AS football matches go it was fairly good, as FA Cup Finals go it was amazing, every final for the last decade or so has been dross. Chelsea - Aston Villa in 2000 anyone?

TheMonster

smuckers wrote:

I thought Viera had a shocker, looks lethargic, v awkward ran into players, first sign of this guy going downhill was a couple of years ago when Parker hounded him like a little terrier, this guy has had a bad season but you know the saying form is temporay and class is permanent, its a bit obvious his mind is elsewhere though.

Have to agree with you there, at one stage on the near touchline Ronaldo skinned him and he gave up very easily as if to say f^%$ this I can't be ar5sed.

PHB

Arsenal Win(Arsenal fans)

I don't know.
I think you can only fault Uniteds finishing which was as a whole terrible, not just with Van Nist but with Ronaldo Rooney Fletcher and Scholes

Otherwise that would have been the best possible preformance from a weakened united team.
SO i figure thats only one thing to fix, and will be fixed once Van Nist starts scoring again, then the confidence will go into the other players

astrofool

They need a new goalkeeper. I mean really, who could see Roy Carroll saving a penalty when it came to it? He just doesn't have the presence of someone like Cech, Lehmann, or even Howard.

PHB

Arsenal Win(Arsenal fans)

Yeh, I saw howard warming up on the bench, I was hoping he'd come on, he is a big big guy.

That said, besides the CL for two years running, what goal keeping errors have really cost us this year. I honaslty would rather the money spent on a midfielder

smemon

Arsenal Win(Arsenal fans)

typical of utd's season really.

again fergie starts with fletcher. we now know he thinks fletcher is in utd's best 11 which tbh i still cant believe. a phil neville would be a much more influencial and better, rounded player than fletcher. in fairness to fletcher he did alright yesterday, one of his better games but played a few stupid passes and cost utd possession a few times.

utd dominated all over and did everything but score. they always looked sharper, hungrier and fitter than arsenal and used ronaldo and rooney well. on another day it would have been 4/5 nil utd. there's no doubt the better side lost.

carroll is not a penalty man, you know by looking at him, he's too big and awkward, like a big plank that falls over to one side. howard is much more agile and flexible, can get about the goal faster which is why he's saved a few before. i always think a goalie should save at least 1 peno out of 5, especially when all the pressure is on the attacker. but it just wasnt utd's day, once it went into extra time i just got that feeling. hopefully it'll make everyone hungrier next year.

case n basket

Man Utd Win(United fans)

{(-_-)}HeadShoT** wrote:

good point

Arsenal need big improvements in summer to keep up with Man utd and Chelsea

haha, recent league tables say otherwise!

On the evidence of one game you can draw any conclusion. If you did that after United were beaten by Norwich you'd expect them to get relegated next season. Arsenal have been playing very well without Henry recently (7-0), the performance yesterday was probably the worst Arsenal have played all season.

scojones

This final just shows that Arsenal are nothing without Terry Henry. No flare or creativity up front without him. Arsenal exposed for the frauds they are!

ziggy

This post has been deleted.

Headshot

sjones wrote:

This final just shows that Arsenal are nothing without Terry Henry. No flare or creativity up front without him. Arsenal exposed for the frauds they are!

dam straight

they have no strenght in dept

zAbbo

{(-_-)}HeadShoT** wrote:

dam straight

they have no straight in dept

Your grammar is as good as manu’s finishing

PHB

Arsenal Win(Arsenal fans)

Great teams score when they are playing badly.
If Arsenal had played that way and then scored at the end, I would have respected that. But they didn't do that, they weren't at that level.
I'd imagine if Chelsea had played like that the whole game they'd probablly have nicked something at the end, but Arsenal didn't.
Best teams don't always win, but when they don't its because the other team had the clinicalness to finish them off, Arsenal didn't have that in the game, and it went to penos, at which point, its anybody's guess. I was very impressed actually with the quality of penos, 9 out of 10 ain't too bad.
Also Arsenal won on penos twice this year in the FA Cup

gandalf

Jaysus lads talk about sour grapes. Arsene made some bad tactical decisions. Playing DB10 (God) right up front was one, keeping Reyes on instead of Van Persie was another and trying to play thru United in the Centre where they are strongests was also baffling.

But hey United didn't finish us off and we won the game and at the end of the day that is all that matters. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Scoles handed us the FA Cup (my most hated United player ).

gandalf

Also I love people saying that Arsenal have no strenght in depth. If anything Arsenal are in better condition than they have been in years with the average age of the squad being so low. I for one are very comfortable with the players they have in place. I agree thou they are very reliant on Henry but then again when you have a talent like that in the team you do gear yourselves towards playing to his strenghts. Hopefully Arsene will address this during pre-season with Van Persie and Reyes (if he stays).

Looking forward to next season already

SteM

Arsenal Win(Arsenal fans)

gandalf wrote:

Jaysus lads talk about sour grapes. Arsene made some bad tactical decisions. Playing DB10 (God) right up front was one, keeping Reyes on instead of Van Persie was another and trying to play thru United in the Centre where they are strongests was also baffling.

But hey United didn't finish us off and we won the game and at the end of the day that is all that matters. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Scoles handed us the FA Cup (my most hated United player ).

There are some sour grapes alright but most sets of fans would be the same the way United lost. You have to admit that Arsenal were severly lacking without Henry up front on Saturday. Bergkamp was hardly in the game in the position he was played.

I find it funny that people are saying stuff like 'we won the game and that's all that matters' - of course United fans weren't allowed say the same thing after the United/Arsenal game at OT when Arsenal were 'cheated' out of the game!

I was dissapointed to loose but thought United played very well as a team (certainly better than Arsenal did) and that gives me some confidence for next season.

gandalf

LOL I have already admitted we were played off the field but we won which is all that matters.

/me gets the brasso and polishing cloth out

mr_angry

In ideal circumstances, Aliadiere would have been the one to play up front on his own in that kind of match. Alas, he's only played about 3 games this season, and hence was totally ruled out of a match like this.

Henry isn't the only injury that limited Arsenal on Saturday.

jank

Some good comments there

http://www.football365.com/opinion/mailbox/story_153133.shtml

This final just shows that Arsenal are nothing without Terry Henry. No flare or creativity up front without him. Arsenal exposed for the frauds they are!

what second in the league and fa cup winners and arsenal are frauds!

Sour grapes from alot of utd supporters AND the media, like how dare they steal the cup from the boy wonder rooney the greatest player ever ever ever!!

If you dont score you dont deserve to win. End of.

A victory like that was so sweet though!

VIEIRA oooooohhhhh, VIEIRA ooooohhh, he comes from Senegal, he plays Arsenal, VIEIRA oooooohhhhh, VIEIRA ooooohhh!