Two dowagers fight over dinner service as silverware slips away
WAYNE ROONEY spent 85 minutes watching some of the most expensive attackers in English football miss chance after chance. Then, with United breaking at pace and the Arsenal defence suicidally stretched, he accelerated on to a pass, changed the ball from foot to foot, and raised a delicate chip beyond the goalkeeper. As lessons go, it was utterly emphatic.
Rooney knew, Arsenal knew, everybody in this part of North London knew that Arsenal should have been home and hosed before United had even raised their voice. But the finishing of Arsene Wenger’s team was abysmal, even by their own wayward standards and what might have been a night of solid advancement became a slow decline into upper mid-table.
It may have all been part of Louis van Gaal’s grand plan but we must doubt it. United had been seriously overrun, surviving through hope and prayer and the ludicrously inadequate finishing of Arsenal’s front men. But they dug in, rode their luck, revealed their character and collected their utterly unlikely reward.
Time was when both clubs debated the glittering prizes, now they tend to know their place: a couple of dowagers squabbling over the dinner service while the men with new money make off with the deeds to the castle. The attacking talent of both sides fairly flooded the field: Danny Welbeck, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Jack Wilshere on one side, Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie and Angel di Maria on the other. But the defences were accidents waiting to happen.
Arsenal have long toiled to accommodate their deeply suspect central defenders but United’s makeshift back four of Paddy McNair, Chris Smalling, Tyler Blackett and Luke Shaw did not suggest a side with serious ambitions. Their plight was scarcely assisted in the 16th minute, when the injured Shaw yielded to Ashley Young. Meanwhile, Van Gaal sat in his dugout looking inscrutable. The assumption used to be that he was thinking profound thoughts. Now, nobody is so sure.
Arsenal should have won the match in the course of their early onslaught. The pace was bewildering, the passing inspired and all the doubts which United’s defenders were clearly nourishing came crowding remorselessly in. For this intoxicating period, Oxlade-Chamberlain was virtually unplayable, bullying defenders with his power and his presence. But the finishing, ah, the finishing! Welbeck was profligate, Oxlade-Chamberlain careless, while Wilshere treated his chances with the extravagance of a lottery winner in a casino. And as they wasted chance upon chance, United sensed that there were points of their own to be made.
After half an hour, the match produced a strangely revealing cameo. With a scrappy challenge, Wilshere provoked a sadly unequal spat with Marouane Fellaini. As the United player reacted, Wilshere thrust his head towards his opponent’s face, twice in swift succession. Had the big man been in theatrical mood, then Arsenal would unquestionably, and quite needlessly, have been reduced to ten. Once again we reflected that Wilshere brings many qualities to this Arsenal team but there is a truculent self-indulgence about him which threatens to prevent him becoming the kind of player he ought to be.
By now, United were established as a force in the match. Rooney was increasingly influential, Fellaini was an imposing target, while Di Maria cannot be subdued for half a football match. You could almost touch the apprehension around the Emirates. They know the plot, they have been here before and they had real fears about how it might all end.
Wilshere’s departure simply increased the tension; a stretching run into the box, a tackle flying in from McNair, the ankle taking the impact. He made a truly forlorn spectacle as he limped away and you wondered how his team would cope without his creativity.
Within a minute, the first United goal provided the answer. Kieran Gibbs compounded his clumsiness in colliding with his own keeper by nudging the subsequent cross into his own net.
It was then that we felt this would not be Arsenal’s night and they started to play as if they knew it. The chance still cropped up, and they were still squandered. But there was an absence of conviction, optimism, all those qualities which teams at the top tend to take for granted. Instead, Arsenal feared there was even worse ahead. And they were right.