Arsenal, Manchester United, and a game without frontiers
Arsenal and Manchester United in the Third Round of the FA Cup was hoped to be one of those big, silly games that they've played in the past, and they didn't disappoint.
Of course, it kinda had to be this sort of match. Arsenal vs Manchester United often has the feel of a lost episode of Jeux Sans Frontieres, and this was no different. But a match that was bubbling with subtext ended up telling both its own self-contained story, along with carrying forward the various sub-plots which have already been playing out through out this season.
For Arsenal, bluntness in front of goal is starting to become a pressing looking issue, especially with the transfer window currently open. The sending off of Diogo Dalot after 62 minutes for a second yellow card handed them an opportunity that they very much needed, in this match.
United had taken the lead ten minutes earlier, a furious shot from Bruno Fernandes which twanged back out of the goal like a catapult was launching the ball. Gabriel brought them level within a couple of minutes of the sedning off, but with this the narrative of the afternoon had switched quite suddenly, and now it was down to Arsenal to go on and win this game.
Nine minutes later they were given a soft penalty kick, but with there being no VAR in the FA Cup until the Fifth Round—at which point it becomes, for some reason, a good idea—there are, essentially, no takesies-backsies, though this was all rendered an irrelevance when Martin Odegaard’s penalty kick was excellently saved by Altay Bayindir.
As the game wore on, the pressure seemed to weigh heavier and heavier. With barely a couple of minutes to play, Kai Havertz scooped the ball over the crossbar from barely a couple of yards out. It felt like an encapsulation of the recent discourse regarding their need for a new striker.
But again, the result was the same as it has been in too many of Arsenal’s recent matches. They had a greater number of shots on goal than Manchester United, but only three more on target. They need that added veneer of a striker that can be guaranteed to put the ball in the back of the net.
Arsenal came and came. United dug in. Both had chances themselves throughout the extra thirty minutes but couldn’t take them, and the sum total of it all was a penalty shoot-out. On the second kick, Havertz’s effort was saved by Bayindir. Every kick thereafter was scored, the very last one by Joshua Zirkzee to win the shootout 5-3. That’s the thing. You can’t afford to miss these chances, whether they’re from two yards out or twelve.
The lack of VAR simultaneously made a huge different to the game and none whatsoever. Havertz had gone down under the barely the slightest touch from Harry Maguire for the penalty, but the resulting shot being saved rendered that largely irrelevant.
But just as interesting as the lack of VAR was the reaction to the lack of VAR. The Manchester United players surrounded the referee when this was awarded, very unhappy with it all, but at the end of the day there was nothing they could do. The referee had made his decision, and that was that. The world kept turning.
There were some handbags before the penalty could be taken, during which Havertz also ended up on the ground after having a “pushing your forehead against someone else’s forehead in such a way that you’re expressing that you would headbutt them if you could but that you simply aren’t allowed to; you know, like rutting goats” competition with Alejandro Garnacho.
Might Garnacho have walked had VAR stared at it from twenty different angles and in super slow-motion? Well, you wouldn’t completely rule it out. That the penalty was missed might have been considered cosmic realignment over Havertz’s antics, though what followed in terms of trying to force that winning goal was a wider reflection on the team than Havertz alone, although he did play his part.
But to what extent to which any of this matter? Because the FA Cup, with its Thursday night kick-offs and sacrificing of replays for asome reason presumably, doesn’t really matter that much any more, does it? Well, not necessarily. There’s a case for saying that, two goals down from their EFL Cup semi-final first leg match against Newcastle, that this result now boils Arsenal’s season down to the Premier League and the Champions League only.
Obviously, there are far worse problems that a football club can have than this, but the FA Cup and the EFL felt like they could be readily attainable trophies for them this season. One or both would have been a decent crowning moment to mark their improvement over the last three seasons, but one’s now gone while the other is hanging by about the thinnest thread imaginable.
Of course, Manchester United and Ruben Amorim have their own lore to write at the moment. They’ve now taken two wins and a draw from matches against Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal, so what might they even be capable of without too much further adjustment? Can this be moulded into The Real Thing, or is this just another one of those Old Trafford False Dawns with which we’ve all become so familiar over the years?
The problem with assessing the likelihood of this happening is that these three matches were all extremely high-pressure and high stakes. Merely watching them has felt exhausting, at times. It’s not reasonable to expect Manchester United’s players to maintain that level of intensity, week-in-week-out.
Their problems both previously this and in previous seasons have come when they’ve not had that about them, when that blood and thunder—which really does seem to put the willies up opponents with technically better players—isn’t inside them. In the absence of that, they’ve looked stodgy and ineffective.
If they can keep the momentum of these three games going, they’ll be set fair. But whether they can, and if so how long for, may be a different matter. It certainly might be enough to carry them all the way through to a cup final. When people do talk of the ‘soul’ of a football club, it’s emerging from backs to the wall situations like this. Ruben Amorim’s job is to turn this sort of performance into a habit. He may be making progress.