Manchester United 4 Arsenal 0
So 9,000 Gooners travelled to Old Trafford and saw their beloved team smashed to a pulp by a Manchester United side which could have won 8-0.
For Arsene Wenger to harangue the fourth official, to bitch about the pitch, and moan about Nani taking the mickey, was pathetic.
If this had been a proper game I’d have re-previewed it on Friday, and previewed it a third time on Saturday morning. If I’m excited by a big game, absorbed by its possibilities, I often do that.
But this was a one-preview game, something to forget about till 4.30 pm on Saturday, when we saw the team sheets. I didn’t need two days to build up to Old Trafford, I wanted two days to build down to it, and being annoyed all day Friday was a key part of building down to it.
The team news was demoralising. It was Arsenal-lite.
Gilberto and Fabregas? Gilberto and Fabregas in central midfield against Man Utd at Old Trafford in the FA Cup Fifth Round? Traore and Hoyte? Bendtner and Eduardo against Vidic and Ferdinand?
Eboue? I thought he’d be sent off and he was. Sorry, I really did think he would be sent off. But not in that way. I envisaged him getting a red card for retaliation, or in a brawl.
He plays Eboue to beef up a lightweight team. While Fabregas, Hleb, Rosicky and Flamini are quite small, Eboue is big and has running power. But no football brain. His final ball is erratic and he’s ridiculously temperamental and he’s unpopular with the fans. Do you know anybody who thinks Eboue should still at the club ?
Traore is a good prospect who was poor against Burnley and rubbish against Spurs and hopeless at Old Trafford. He’s not ready for this level yet. Gilberto is past it, Hoyte hardly jumped for the first goal as the ball went to Rooney, Toure was dodgy in Ghana after his injury and worse here, Bendtner will be sold in the summer, Eduardo is a gifted bantamweight box player in a team that couldn’t get into the box.
Fabregas had his worst game ever in an Arsenal shirt and the back four played as if they had never met. Adebayor came on and threw himself onto the deck, appealing for a penalty. They were 4-0 down by then ! The game was over. Why does a six foot five athlete embarrass his supporters even further by diving to the ground when he hasn’t been touched ? What’s the point of that?
At 2-0 down, Arsenal were still playing with one up. Clueless, shotless, defenceless – and humiliating for the fans
The Manchester United performance was formidable, vibrant, worthy of champions. They were ferociously determined, first to every ball, as we knew they would be after losing 2-1at home to Man City last week. Wayne Rooney played in his Capello position and gave Toure and Gallas the run-around. Luckily for Arsene Wenger, Rooney missed six chances after scoring the first goal.
Anderson is an exciting midfielder that Sir Alex admits he signed for next season, planning to feed him into the team gradually. But now he can’t leave Anderson out and we can all see why. The lad is a fireball but not just a high-energy warrior. He is a high-energy technician who can create and destroy, who can win it and pass it, who can swing it across the pitch, who can explode forward with the ball or in support of his own passes.Combining maximum aggression with maximum technique, Anderson is a phenomenal gladiator who will soon be playing regularly alongside Kaka in the Brazilian national team
With Ronaldo and Tevez missing, it was time for left winger Nani to step up to the plate. And he did exactly that. He stepped up, big time.
Nani initiated the first goal with a right-footed left wing corner.His right foot cross allowed Darren Fletcher to head in the second off the skull of Gallas. He scored with a left-foot shot for 3-0 after a run behind the defence that Traore failed to cover or even see.And his pinpoint left-foot cross gave Fletcher a far-post header for 4-0
On the first goal, Nani’s free-kick was headed out by Bendtner, Anderson butted the ball back over Hoyte, Rooney headed in from pointblank range.
At that point, after 16 minutes, you wondered whether Arsenal would have a shot in the game. In fact, Edwin van der Sar did not have one save to make in 93 minutes. Therefore this “FA Cup tie” was a farce, a shambles, a walkover, a fraud.
On this evidence, Arsenal have no squad. They have a first team but no squad, no bench. The world’s fifth richest club should have a squad but what we saw on Saturday was that the world’s fifth richest club could not put out a credible team at Old Trafford for a Fifth Round FA Cup tie, so they got hammered.
BBC pundit Alan Hansen was not exaggerating when he said, “Arsenal were beaten before they went on the pitch.”
Last season, when Arsenal were floundering in the Premiership, the domestic cup competitions were deemed to be important. This season, going for the title, the cups have been treated with contempt, resulting in a 5-1 defeat at Spurs and a 4-0 thrashing at Manchester United.
Thankfully, I’m not bent out of shape by the result, so I hope I can be more rational than most about this particular debacle. I’m not one of those who switched off at 2-0, or one who said, two hours before kick-off, “I’d take a 1-0 defeat now.”
I’ll remember the Nani Show as the day Arsene Wenger Carlinged the FA Cup.
Of course, like you, I’m intrigued to see what impact this fiasco has on the AC Milan game.
Football is a game of sequences and, according to Palmer’s Law No.4, every football match contains the previous match.