For Louis van Gaal, it was an ignominious way to confirm there will be no trophy in his first season at Manchester United. His team fell way short, and the indignities were considerable bearing in mind the identity of the player who scored the decisive goal and the various sub-plots provided by the expensive recruits who were supposed to put a fallen team back on a steep, upward trajectory.
Danny Welbeck will certainly have relished his goal given Van Gaal’s unflattering remarks after showing him off the premises last autumn, and Arsène Wenger made a clever decision to entrust him with the central striker role, knowing that he would have a point to prove against his former club. Arsenal were sharper in attack but, just as importantly, less accident-prone on a night when their opponents defended with something bordering on recklessness.
Van Gaal was agitated enough to make a rare excursion to the technical area, and he must have been startled by his team’s lack of care on another unhappy occasion for Ángel di María, sent off for an act of dim-wittedness as United went huffing and puffing after an equaliser.
Di María’s first yellow card was for diving and the second followed moments later, when he took umbrage with the decision, clipped the referee, Michael Oliver, on his back and had a little pull of his shirt. It was a split-second of stupidity that should embarrass the most expensive player in Britain, and the low point in a season that has become a personal ordeal. Radamel Falcao, meanwhile, could not even get off the bench and there was a moment of tragi-comedy afterwards when Van Gaal defended the on-loan striker, signed to replace Welbeck, by pointing out that he had scored four goals and “stimulated” the other players. Who did he mean? United, once again, wore a dishevelled look and it was bordering on desperation when the substitute Adnan Januzaj was booked for another dive.
Arsenal did not have to resort to duplicity. They won because they passed the ball more effectively. They made fewer errors and played with superior intelligence. Santi Cazorla refused to be dragged down by the frequency of the mistakes elsewhere. Francis Coquelin stood out again and the movement of their forward line always caused problems. Welbeck might have looked raw at times, conspicuously nervous early on, but he was a tireless runner and the support cast of Alexis Sánchez, Mesut Özil and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain must have been encouraged by the home side’s vulnerabilities.
The carelessness affected both teams and was due in part to the fact that the pace of the game was so frenetic. That, in turn, made it a far more exciting spectacle than just about everything that has preceded it at Old Trafford this season. Yet it was still strange to see the frequency with which accomplished players lost the ball. It was that kind of night: lots of blood and thunder and a fair amount of thud and blunder, too.
Wayne Rooney’s goal, four minutes after Nacho Monreal had given Arsenal the lead, did at least show that Van Gaal was right to restore him to attack. Yet no team can defend as generously as United and expect to get away with it. Monreal’s goal was a collective failure, but Welbeck’s was a calamity for Antonio Valencia, bearing in mind it came from his scuffed backpass. Welbeck was on the ball in a flash, flicking it one side of David de Gea and running round the other to score into an empty net.
Rooney had taken his goal superbly, reading the flight of Di María’s cross and taking advantage of some poor marking from Laurent Koscielny to flash his header past Wojciech Szczesny. United will also look back on a chance for Chris Smalling, at 2-1, when the defender put the ball over. Smalling, once again, looked conspicuously short of what Van Gaal requires from a thinking man’s team. It has become a recurring theme and he was one of the players implicated in Monreal’s goal.
The only mitigation is that it must have been difficult for Van Gaal to know who to point the finger at first. In those moments we saw Smalling being sucked out of position to the right-back spot, Valencia becoming stranded and Oxlade-Chamberlain expertly eluding Luke Shaw, Ashley Young and Daley Blind before Monreal turned in his pass without anybody tracking his run.
Arsenal lost Oxlade-Chamberlain to a hamstring injury early in the second half, whereas Shaw and Ander Herrera were both removed by Van Gaal during the interval. Michael Carrick was brought on, presumably to help provide some polish in midfield. Yet the lack of composure from United was alarming and, as Van Gaal said afterwards, they were self-inflicted wounds. Welbeck’s goal stemmed from nothing more basic than a long goal-kick from Szczesny. Di María’s meltdown came in the 74th minute and Van Gaal’s verdict – “not so smart” – was being kind bearing in mind he had warned his players to make sure they kept their discipline.
Arsenal had not won at Old Trafford since September 2006 but they played as if affronted by the suggestion they have an inferiority complex against these opponents. It needed another demonstration of De Gea’s brilliance to prevent Cazorla adding a third, and the semi-final draw, pitting Arsenal against Reading or Bradford, completed a hugely satisfying night’s work.
