Manchester United surprised Manchester City to clinch the FA Cup with a stunning 2-1 win in Saturday’s finals.
The win might be a huge relief to united’s Coach Erik Ten Hag who was on the verge of being dismissed because of the team’s poor performance in this season. Man U settled for the 8th position int the Premier League table with Ten hag describing the season as ‘dreadful.’
Ten Hag managed to neutralize Pep Guardiola’s side, with goals from Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo in the first half putting United on track to win the FA Cup for the first time in eight years.
Jeremy Doku managed to score an 87th-minute goal past Andre Onana’s weak save, but it was too late for City to recover.
Ten Hag celebrated by kissing the Cup as he held it aloft in the Royal box.
When asked if he was concerned about his future, he replied,: “I don’t know. The only thing I’m doing is preparing my team. This is a project for me. When I came in I can say it was a mess. Now we are better. We are not where we want to be.”
“Congratulations to United. It was a tight game. It can happen. At the end they scored two goals and we couldn’t score more,” Guardiola said on the other hand.
Guardiola however admitted that he is to blame for City’s failure to clinch the FA Cup.
“It’s my mistake – the game plan was not good,” he said but declined to further elaborate his statement. “The players know it, the reason why. Tactically, it was not good. I had the feeling it was not good today.You plan a game for different positions, but didn’t work – it’s as simple as that.”
“The crosses came to nothing when we came to the byline; they had one shot where we gave the goal away, and then the goal for Mainoo – no more than that.
As always when we play against United, we more or less had control and normally we score from what we created in the second half, but we were not able to do it,” Guardiola further said.