the times | Monday June 29 2020 1GG 7
thegame
Match briefingRATINGS
Norwich City (4-1-4-1): T Krul 8 — M Aarons 6,
B Godfrey 6, T Klose 5, J Lewis 6 (A Idah 118min) —
A Tettey 6 — E Buendía 6 (O Duda 90, 5) , L Rupp 6
(O Hernández 62, 6), K McLean 6, T Cantwell 7
(T Trybull 90, 5) — T Pukki 5 (J Drmic 71, 5).
Sent off Klose.
Manchester United (4-2-3-1) S Romero 5 — D Dalot 6
(B Williams 63, 5), E Bailly 6 (A Martial 96, 6),
H Maguire 7, L Shaw 7 — S McTominay 6 (N Matic 78,
7), Fred 5 (P Pogba 78, 6) — J Mata 6 (M Greenwood
63, 6), B Fernandes 7, J Lingard 5 (M Rashford 63, 5)
— O Ighalo 6. Booked Fernandes.
Referee J Moss.Norwich City
1Man United
2Chris Wilder accused Arsenal’s
players of going to ground too easily
to win decisions from the referee in
their narrow win over Sheffield
United.
Wilder admitted that Chris Basham
made contact with Alexandre
Lacazette for Arsenal’s penalty, but
claimed that the France striker and
his team-mates fell over too easily
throughout the match.
“It seems to me that you don’t need
to give an invitation out for those
boys to go over,” Wilder, the Sheffield
United manager, said.
“Maybe it is natural for those sort
of players. It isn’t natural for me and
my players.
“There is contact, he has felt it and
gone down and given the referee a
decision to make. From our point of
view, if Bash stays on his feet, and is
patient, we are in a decent position.”
Mikel Arteta praised Nicolas Pépé
for his performance. The forward
physical data collected by United
from players’ home training sessions
during lockdown showed Matic,
McTominay, Jesse Lingard and Bruno
Fernandes as the top performers.
The club’s next smart personnel
move could be to extend Matic’s
contract beyond 2021. Reaching the
FA Cup last four is another staging
post on the way to arriving at the
“winning culture” he wants at his
club, Solskjaer said — and it was in an
FA Cup semi-final that Matic enjoyed
perhaps the finest single moment of
his career in England, when he drove
a glorious 30-yard shot into the top
corner to score in Chelsea’s
demolition of Spurs at that stage of
the competition in 2017.
Elimination leaves Norwich with
only Premier League status to fight
for. Lose away to Arsenal on
Wednesday and that battle will surely
be over too — but take something
from the game and they will cling to
hope, given their ensuing three
matches are against fellow relegation
contenders.
In taking United almost all the way
to penalties, after losing Timm Klose
to an 89th-minute red card when he
hauled down Ighalo to prevent a clear
goalscoring opportunity, Norwich at
least showed the mental fibre needed
to survive.
Daniel Farke’s side have perhaps
lost the joy and risk that was in their
football at the start of the season but
in Todd Cantwell and Emi Buendía
they still have players who can
penetrate the best of teams.
Buendía does it through passing;
Cantwell with off-the-ball running
and an optimistic mindset, and the
pair dovetailed those abilities for
Cantwell’s equaliser in the 75th
minute. Ighalo’s 51st-minute opener
for United had been good — an
improvised finish to beat Krul,
who was in brilliant form, after Juan
Mata hooked the ball his way —
but Cantwell’s strike was better.
After some perseverance and
skill by one of Farke’s substitutes,
Onel Hernández, Buendía found
Cantwell, who shot from 25 yards,
striking the ball earlier and with more
slice than Sergio Romero anticipated,
and beating United’s goalkeeper.
Cantwell was prominent in two
counterattacks where Norwich could
have scored as they shaded a turgid
first half.
But with Solskjaer becoming the
first manager in history to make six
substitutions in a competitive English
match, United’s squad power told.
So did special-ops Matic.minutes and before that, his arrival as
a substitute helped United come back
to draw away to Tottenham. Matic’s
time at United looked to be up not
long ago but now he is Solskjaer’s
serene and stylish special-ops man.
Centre back is clearly a position he
could convert to in his later career,
given his physique, reading of play,
and necessity in the modern game
for defenders to have passing ability.
Or the role could become his
occasional speciality, as it did
for Solskjaer’s assistant,
Michael Carrick, in the
final phase of his
playing days.
However, still
a month away
from turning
32, Matic
appears renewed physically
and capable of continuing in
central midfield where he can
mentor McTominay and rotate
with the young Scot and Fred,
allowing Solskjaer to keep his
options there fresh. It now
seems a slump under José
Mourinho may have been down
to mental and physical fatigue.
Solskjaer ascribed Matic’s
resurgence to him using football’s
hiatus to have “his first good pre-
season in many, many years” andscored Arsenal’s first from the penalty
and had a hand in the injury-time
winner scored by Dani Ceballos.
The Ivory Coast international
struggled at the start of the season
after his £72 million move from Lille,
but he now has eight goals and assists
to his name.
“I am very much excited about
what he can bring. I think he has
made a click,” the Arsenal manager
said. “I am so pleased to see his
defensive actions and then when on
the ball he gives us creativity.
“It is very important to understand
the player, his feelings. It is a new
country for him. He has to speak to
his team-mates and what happened in
that process. He is very willing, a nice
boy, always smiling around everyone,
a bit of a free spirit and now he is
showing his commitment.
“I don’t know how he was feeling
before. Hopefully we are in the right
direction with Nico.”
Arteta also said that David Luiz will
have a scan on his ankle today after
hobbling off in the second half.“It was time to get the forwards on,
get Nemanja playing centre back, and
we only needed one centre back,” Ole
Gunnar Solskjaer said — one of those
times when, in a passing comment, a
manager speaks volumes about a
player.
Level against a scrapping, ten-man
Norwich City, whose resilience was in
danger of taking this quarter-final to
penalties, the Manchester United
manager needed something extreme.
He provided it by sending Harry
Maguire up to join the four strikers he
already had hammering away at the
Norwich resistance. But someone had
to keep United’s back door shut,
someone with the composure, the
strategy, the ground-covering stride to
do the job alone.
Who better than Nemanja Matic,
that middle-distance athlete with the
football computer on board? With
Matic gliding into all the right
positions to give United a one-man
rearguard the rest of United’s outfield
players could focus on attacking —
and it was Maguire who finally broke
Norwich down, reacting to a ricochet
to turn a loose ball past Tim Krul for
United’s 118th-minute winner. They’re
going to Wembley — an empty
Wembley — but Wembley
nevertheless.
United’s progress to the FA Cup
semi-finals and in some senses the
way they got there — winning ugly
and winning tired after a long week
— emphasised their development
during the second half of 2019-20.
And the specifics spoke of the good
personnel decisions that are finally
being made by the club. Maguire
continues to repay his record
£80 million fee and the scorer of
United’s opening goal, their loanee
from Shanghai Shenhua, Odion
Ighalo, continues to look a
surprisingly smart piece of business.
Then there is Matic. Back in March,
during the first week of English
football’s coronavirus shutdown,
United triggered a clause to extend
the Serb’s contract for another year.
The announcement gained almost no
attention. But what a good decision.
Matic’s deal had been due to expire
on June 30 — tomorrow — but
instead of saying his goodbyes at
Carrington he will be spending it in
Brighton, where United resume
their Premier League campaign
and pursuit of a place in the
Champions League. Matic is likely
to start, having been used as a
substitute, replacing Scott
McTominay in the 78th
minute, at Carrow Road.
But, whether he begins
them or appears in
cameo, Matic has
been having a
telling
influence
on games
since a
resurgence that started after he
returned from injury at the turn
of the year. Against Norwich he
packed 49 passes — three of them
key passes, with a success rate of
94 per cent — into 42 minutes on
the pitch.
In a 3-0 win versus Sheffield
United last Wednesday, his numbers
were even more impressive — 99
passes, 95 of them accurate, plus eight
ball recoveries and zero fouls over 90Special-ops Matic does
Solskjaer’s dirty work
JONATHAN NORTHCROFTMatic, who tussled with Norwich’s Josip Drmic on Saturday, has been a driving
force for United since the restart. Below, Maguire celebrates his winning goalJOE TOTH/BPI/REX333M‘It’s not natural’ – Wilder hits
out at Lacazette over penalty
PAUL HIRST
Arsenal and Manchester United both
reached the last four of the FA Cup for the
30th time this weekend
30
30
26
24
24
21
21
20MOST FA CUP SEMI-FINALSArsenal
Manchester United
Everton
Liverpool
Chelsea
Aston Villa
Tottenham Hotspur
West Bromwich AlbionCeballos
wheels away
after his late
winner that put
Arsenal into
the semi-finalsBRADLEY ORMESHER/NMC/POOL