FA Cup News
Ilkay Gundogan scored two volleys, the first after 13 seconds, as Manchester City won a hard-fought game to move within one game of the treble
Third round Everton (H) 3-1
Fourth round Reading (H) 3-1
Fifth round West Ham (H) 3-1
Quarter-final Fulham (H) yep, 3-1
Semi-final Brighton (N) 0-0 (7-6 pens)
Third round Chelsea (H) 4-0
Fourth round Arsenal (H) 1-0
Fifth round Bristol City (A) 3-0
Quarter-final Burnley (H) 6-0
Semi-final Sheff Utd (N) 3-0
Continue reading...The first all-Manchester FA Cup final is framed by City’s pursuit of total supremacy and making their old foes suffer
It was a small and inconsequential moment but one that said plenty about a mood and a rivalry. Manchester City were 6-2 up in the Premier League derby against United at the Etihad Stadium last October and we were into the 89th minute.
Previously, after Phil Foden had made it 6-1 on 73 minutes to join Erling Haaland as the scorer of a hat-trick, the City fans had joked that they wanted 10. Or maybe they were not joking. Now, shortly after the United substitute Anthony Martial had pulled one back, City built in midfield only for João Cancelo to play a loose pass, Bruno Fernandes intercepting for the visitors. There was an audible groan from the home support.
Continue reading...Pep Guardiola has told Manchester City fans to be on their best behaviour at Wembley on Saturday when the club play Manchester United in the FA Cup final for the first time.
There is heightened tension because United have a chance to stop City securing a treble to match their own in 1999. There were 34 arrests when the teams met in the semi-finals at Wembley in 2011 and authorities will be hoping to avoid a repeat.
Continue reading...Erik ten Hag denied that Manchester United required the luck of a controversial Bruno Fernandes goal to beat Manchester City in January’s derby, with the manager pointing to his side’s superior expected goals (xG) in the game.
That match at Old Trafford ended 2-1 to Ten Hag’s team and came after the champions had humiliated United 6-3 in October’s reverse fixture. City took the lead through a Jack Grealish header before Fernandes equalised. The goal was initially ruled out because Marcus Rashford was in an offside position but was awarded after the forward was deemed not to be interfering with play. Rashford later scored the winner.
Continue reading...Manchester United were the original domestic powerhouse but Manchester City’s modern brand threatens to eclipse them
Now for the big series-ender. You have to hand it to the FA Cup. Football’s grand old patrician knockout pot may have grown a little mildewed and liver-spotted with age. But, like some geriatric sovereign stepping out from the shadows and striding the shopfloors one last time, it still knows how to twitch the threads. Saturday’sToday’s final at Wembley already looks like that rarest of things, a genuine multilayered epic.
At the end of a season that seems to have been going on for at least three years, when so many storylines have faded in and out, fractured by the outage at its centre, here is an end note to the domestic calendar that comes prepacked with fat, wet, impossibly ripe storylines. Power, succession, legacy. A heritage-gold 3pm kick-off. Frankly the Cup hasn’t looked so vital or hip in years.
Continue reading...The Manchester United manager, Erik ten Hag, has urged his players to take the 'great opportunity' in front of them and win the English FA Cup at the expense of their local rivals Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday. While City are seeking to lift England's oldest trophy for the seventh time, the Reds are hoping for a 13th triumph. City are also seeking the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League titles – a feat only previously achieved by United in 1999.
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Saturday, Wembley Way. The tribes will gather, demarcated by red and blue – though Mancunian fashion by-laws dictate all adult males must wear white ankle socks below thigh-revealing shorts, should temperatures top 15 degrees. It’s likely to be bad-tempered; it always is between these two, but rail strikes and lengthy motorway delays from Congleton downwards are hardly likely to ease the mood.
Continue reading...The Manchester United midfielder discusses facing City, his friendship with Bruno Fernandes and his first FA Cup final
Casemiro has a simple way of shrugging off the spectre of Manchester United’s 6-3 trouncing by Manchester City in October as he prepares for Saturday’s FA Cup final and 190th derby.
“Every game is a different story, a different film as we like to say,” says the Brazilian. “You have to be realistic, and I like to be very much a realist. They were better than us in that game. They deserved to beat us but when you talk about a 6-3 in the context of a league, it’s still three points that you get.
Continue reading...Manchester City’s treble bid has been built not only on Erling Haaland but on subtle changes and innovations further back
“Talk about John Stones. Please, before Haaland.” And Pep Guardiola banged his head on the press conference dais in mock exasperation. It was September last year, at the height of Erling-mania, and Manchester City had just beaten Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League with a goal from their big new striker. But Guardiola was keen to shift the conversation elsewhere.
And in hindsight, Guardiola was not really joking. Instead, he was trying to give us a clue. He was, as ever, urging us to look beyond the superficial and see what was happening under the bonnet. The season that may well be remembered as the greatest in City’s history has been built not merely on the goals of Haaland and the assists of Kevin De Bruyne, but on the subtle changes and innovations further back. It has been, above all, the season of Stones.
Continue reading...We pick out four important areas, including City’s newfound prowess at crossed set plays and where Stones and Rashford are deployed
United’s victory in the last derby turned out to be nowhere near as pivotal as it felt at the time. It was a ninth win in a row for Erik ten Hag’s side and took them to within a point of City; approaching the halfway point of the season, they seemed very much part of the title race. A draw at Crystal Palace and defeat at Arsenal in the two games that followed exposed that as fallacy. But that does not mean the game was not meaningful – even if that significance was probably felt more by City than United.
Continue reading...The defender says ‘We know we are able to beat any team,’ as United try to scupper Manchester City’s treble chance
In a gleaming white Manchester United training suit Raphaël Varane emanates the kind of pre-FA Cup final cool that will be a boon to teammates when trying to claim a second trophy of the season and halt Manchester City’s tilt at the treble in Saturday’s Wembley showpiece.
Not that the France World Cup winner and four-time Champions League victor with Real Madrid is characterising taking on Pep Guardiola’s gilded team in any way that might allow his quotes to be dressing-room motivation fodder.
Continue reading...Treble is the target but centre-back knows looking beyond the FA Cup final against Manchester United is dangerous
Rúben Dias is the leader of Manchester City’s defence who Pep Guardiola loves to cite as the model footballer owing to the 26-year-old’s drive to burnish his elite talent via an uber-professionalism. In a team built to chase perfection this pursuit of excellence makes Dias one of Guardiola’s captains and is an inherent quality of a centre-back who was voted the Football Writers’ Association’s player of the year in 2020-21, his first season at City.
“I guess I’ve always been like this, it’s the way I believe I should conduct myself and it’s the way that makes sense to me,” says Dias of percentage gains. “Definitely. Football is details and the more details you can put together the better. This is the way that makes my life have more sense and I follow through with it.
Continue reading...As City and United prepare to meet in the FA Cup final, their former midfield force describes how a derby victory at Wembley 12 years ago helped shift the balance of power in Manchester
Yaya Touré was Manchester City’s buccaneering force when Roberto Mancini’s side ended a 35-year trophy drought by beating Stoke City 1-0 in the 2011 FA Cup final, claiming the first silverware of Sheikh Mansour’s proprietorship.
The Ivorian scored the winner at Wembley, as he had done in the semi-final defeat of Manchester United which marked the moment City began to dislodge their neighbours as England’s dominant force. Touré, too, was in the XI that handed United a 6-1 hiding six months later at Old Trafford which continued an ascendancy that, 12 years on, has them seeking to beat United again at Wembley. This time in Saturday’s FA Cup final, the second step of the attempt by Pep Guardiola’s gilded team to landi the treble and emulate Sir Alex Ferguson’s 1999 vintage.
Continue reading...Manchester United’s Anthony Martial has been ruled out of Saturday’s FA Cup final against Manchester City due to a hamstring injury.
“The France international strained his hamstring towards the end of Sunday’s 2-1 win against Fulham at Old Trafford,” read a United statement. “Assessments have since revealed a muscle tear that rules the 27-year-old out of the Wembley showdown.”
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