I‘m not going to drivel on in a boring way about football. It’s just not a bloggy type thing. But really, could the FA Cup Final have been any worse? Obviously, if I was a Chelsea fan I wouldn’t give two hoots (although I do remember how bad 1999 was really, despite the end).
But as a Man Utd fan (yes, I know I’ll be encouraging daft comments with this, but lets just clear this up now, I was in the Stretford end as a foetus in 1969, I don’t care if I’m Scottish and live in Edinburgh, I was born in Manchester, I’m proper Red, right? My name is even on the pavement outside the ground. Gottit? good. ).
So, as I was saying, as a Man Utd fan is was not only the most boring game imaginable, it was so against everything you’d expect them to be. We had won the league, done the hard bit, we should have played with freedom. But we didn’t. We played not to lose in the hope that something would magical happen. That’s no way to do it.
Neither team really looked like a decent team until they brought on another striker and by then the game was far to nervy to have much shape.
We should have gone at them from the start, if they had scored a goal early, so what, it would have clarified what we had to do. Make no mistake, hanging on for penalties wasn’t good for us. We would have lost on penalties. Don’t ask me how I know, we would have. Sir Alex knew that, he said as much before the game. So why all the caution? I honestly have no idea.
My point is this, you don’t get anything without being prepared to take a degree of risk. You have to set out to win. There is a lesson there for many things I’m sure.
I’m not denying that Chelsea are very hard to break down but a bit of pace and movement and Scholes would have picked the passes and won us the game. Instead we played to avoid losing. Which was a real disappointment. I’m not as disappointed at losing as I am at the way we lost.
I’ve been watching United since I was very small. I can tell when its going to be a good day and I knew early on that we weren’t playing at the right tempo. I’d love to see this stat, in the games were Utd get a corner in the first 5 minutes, how many do they lose? I bet its not many.
One good thing, it was great to see the coverage before the game showing Norman Whiteside’s goal that won the 1985 cup. I was 15 and remember standing on the coffee table near to tears screaming when it went in. Shame it wasn’t like that yesterday. Although, obviously, if I had a coffee table it would doubtless be in bits if it had happened, I’m not the skelf I once was.
