Football… bloody hell, as someone once said.
Manchester United managed to turn a walk in the park into a fight for survival at Wembley as they were pegged back from 3-0, saw a Coventry City winner disallowed in the final moments of extra time, and just squeaked past the Championship side 4-2 on penalties to reach next month’s FA Cup final against Manchester City.
Goals from Scott McTominay, Harry Maguire and Bruno Fernandes had Erik ten Hag’s side three up and coasting in the sunshine in north-west London, but Coventry had other ideas.
Ellis Simms got their first in the 71st minute, sweeping the ball in with his right foot in yards of space inside the box, and Callum O’Hare added a second seven minutes later, his shot deflecting off Aaron Wan-Bissaka to wrong-foot goalkeeper Andre Onana.
United fans held their breath when Victor Torp unleashed a powerful shot from the edge of the box, and again as Coventry peppered Onana’s goal with the clock ticking down.
And then came that all-too-familiar feeling when referee Robert Jones pointed to the spot in stoppage time after deciding Luis Binks’ shot had hit the arm of Wan-Bissaka. The Video Assistant Referee opted not to overturn the decision and Haji Wright stepped up to make it 3-3.
There was yet more drama in extra time. Wright drilled a shot just past the far post, Simms hit the crossbar and Coventry had a late winner chalked off for a tight offside after Torp thought he had completed the most remarkable of comebacks.
Casemiro saw his opening penalty for United saved, but Onana stopped O’Hare’s effort before captain Ben Sheaf put his attempt high over the bar. Rasmus Hojlund converted United’s final spot kick to book his side’s place in an all-Manchester final on May 25.
Onana received a second yellow card during the shootout but was not sent off because his first booking was not carried over after extra time. The same thing happened to his Aston Villa counterpart Emiliano Martinez last week in his side’s Europa Conference League quarter-final victory over French club Lille. Onana will not be suspended for the final as accumulated cautions in the FA Cup end in the last eight, according to the Football Association.
An exhausted Carl Anka analyses the key talking points from Wembley…
Why do United always seem to do this?
At the hour mark, The Athletic had written a long paragraph on how this semi-final was United’s most measured and controlled performance in months. There were lines in there outlining how Ten Hag’s side had committed fewer players ahead of the ball when in possession and were better at compressing the spaces between the lines when working without it. This was a team 3-0 up and seemingly through to the FA Cup final. Despite the injuries, off-field disruption and other issues, Ten Hag had almost managed to secure his third domestic final in two seasons.
Then it happened. Another collapse.
But this one lacked the speed or chaos of last autumn’s Champions League defeats by Galatasaray and FC Copenhagen, and instead displayed the steady inevitability — drip, drip, drip — of water damage on a house.
O’Hare’s goal to make it 3-2 spread fear through the United ranks. Coventry kicked on, attacking the space behind an underwhelming Marcus Rashford and exploiting Wan-Bissaka’s naivety on balls from wide areas. Had it not been for several vital interceptions from Diogo Dalot on cut-back crosses (a known United weakness), the Championship side could have scored a fourth or fifth goal in normal time. In the end, they had to settle for a 95th-minute penalty from Wright to send the game to extra time.
It would take the 97th-minute introduction of Amad Diallo for Rashford — who hobbled off injured — for United to staunch the bleeding on their left flank and restore a semblance of control, but by then the damage had already…
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