By Myles Palmer
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IF ARSENAL are as good as their season they will beat United in the FA Cup Final.
WHY?
WELL, LET’S COMPARE Man United’s year with Arsenal’s.
United had a pre-season tournament at Old Trafford and then they went to the States and that was very bad preparation for losing 3-1 to Arsenal in the Community Shield and losing that was bad preparation for playing Chelsea away in their first game, where they lost 1-0.
They also had Bucharest, a qualifying round for the Champions League.
With all that, United, by their standards, never really got going.
Myself, I think United have been sinking ever since the night Fergie kicked that boot into Beckham’s eyebrow.
They haven’t been the same team, haven’t had the same spirit.
Playing for United was more than a paycheque for Becks and Butt.
Without them the team has been shaky, flaky, unreliable, weak where it used to be strong
Yes, United had a run of 50 points from 20 games before losing at Norwich, but Norwich told us a lot.
That week United had been looked after by assistant coach Carlos Queiroz, not Sir Alex.
Their attitude in that match at Norwich was, I’m reliably informed, the worst by any Man United team in the last 25 years.
They were garbage in that game.
At home to Chelsea in Premiership match 37 they scored first through RVN, but Chelsea, with half their first team missing, came from behind to thump them 3-1 with Tiago equalising and Joe Cole getting an offside goal that didn’t matter.
Gudjohnsen had made it 2-1 and I know for a fact that the Chelsea players were very surprised by how easy it became after that.
So 80% of the OT crowd went home and the players had to do a lap of dishonour with only their 20% of real hardcore fans cheering them after finishing third again.
When Fergie switches his team around, sometimes arbitrarily, it can look like he’s re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Can his team, after all this, pull out one volcanic, passionate, dynamic performance and beat Arsenal to grab the FA Cup ?
I don’t think they can. I just can’t see it. Call me blind, call me biased, I just can’t see it.
United can only win this FA Cup if Arsenal give it to them.
ARSENAL’S SEASON started with dazzling football, with Bergkamp playing out of his skin for six weeks.
They stuttered in Europe, crashed at Old Trafford, didnt handle that, had a dodgy spell for three months
But Arsenal have played well in the last two months, Lehmann and Gilberto are back, Senderos is superb, van Persie is scoring, and so is Bergkamp.
Consistent again, they went unbeaten in 12 games, losing only to a late Heskey goal on the final day.
Arsenal have had a better season than Manchester United.
They lost twice to United but still finished above them.
They drew against Chelsea by 2-2 and 0-0.
I don’t think Fergie will start van Nistelrooy.
If they have any sense at all United will try to attack fast and narrow like they did at Highbury in the second half when United won 4-2 and Ronaldo scored twice.
He will use Rooney like Gudjohnsen and Giggs like Duff and Ronaldo like Robben,
I EXPECT ARSENAL TO WIN.
I’ve thought that all along, three weeks ago, two weeks ago, yesterday and today.
Reyes and Vieira will be the big players in Cardiff.
BUT REMEMBER : THERE IS REAL HATRED between these two sets of players.
That is not a rumour.
That is not a fiction.
That is not a tabloid headline.
There is real hatred between these players.
It was deeply misguided for Vieira to get into a war of words with Roy Keane, a notorious wind-up artist.
Keane has never been psyched-out by anyone except Shearer, who got Keane sent off when they went eyeball-to-eyeball in September 2001.
Keane fell for Shearer’s provocation and raised his hands and got a red card.
Then Keane grinned because he knew he had done by a master.
No Arsenal player is an assassin like Shearer. No Arsenal player is that ruthless, that cold, that calculating.
So they should concentrate on playing football.When it comes to mind-games, none of them are in Keane’s class, let alone Shearer’s class.
On Wednesday Keane made a comment that sounded like a threat. He said: “Some people think it will be an anticlimax but I think it will be pretty explosive.”
Arsenal try to play, Man United try to win.
But this time I reckon Arsenal will outplay them, perhaps spectacularly.
It might be not be close because Arsenal are more balanced, more resourceful, with a better goalkeeper.
They’ve had a better season and deserve a trophy.
May 20th 2005