Manchester United put Amorim through ‘torture’ before Mark Robins moment

If Ruben Amorim is struggling to deal with the incompetence of Manchester United now then a Europa League final v Spurs might push him over the edge.

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Circus of Dreams or Theatre of Clowns?

Smashing the 4th best team in a Farmers league, then capitulating, Mainoo giving hope, then former Captain Maguire (who MUFC and their fans desperately wanted out of the club) winning it for them.

It made for thrilling viewing.

Branmasterflash (looking forward to Bilbao putting them to the sword)

Dead and buri…

Football, bloody hell!

Sanjit (slabhead, you beauty!) Randhawa, Kuala Lumpur.

Hi Ed,

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Surely some of the plastics have been burnt off by the sheer stress of watching this United “team”.

FFS,

Liam.

The script writers used up all their remontadas in this one match.

Gaurav MUFC Amsterdam (only undefeated side in Europe)

Harry Houdini

Oh football. You sweet, sweet temptress. Just when I thought I was out, you pull me back in. From nowhere, and despair, to glory in the space of a few chaotic minutes. That’s the type of match that reminds you how lucky we are to be able to watch and love this sport.

There is no point dissecting the game, as it will be done better by someone with a clearer mind than I currently have. But suffice to say, that was typical United – we never do things the easy way.

Absolutely delighted for the manager, you can see him going through torture at times on the sideline and he’s trying his best to get through to these players. A defeat there, given the circumstances, would have put him under so much premature pressure. Obviously there is still work to do to even get to the final, but we’re still alive and still have a chance.

Will it be Ruby’s Mark Robins moment, when Harry Maguire’s forehead will be etched in the sands of time as the catalyst of a period of success, who knows. But that was one hell of a game of football. Bring on Bilbao!

Garey Vance, MUFC

Unleash the eyebrow

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. For the love of God! Ancelotti to United, surely?

Jimmy.

The Celebration Police come a-knocking

I feel it is my obligation, as an Arsenal fan, to remind ManYoo fans that they haven’t won anything, yet.

Seriously, though, thrilling stuff and well fought.

David

As a Liverpool fan who has seen us win 5-4 against Alaves and also seen the reaction.

Guys…its the Europa league?

Cowlick

Further to that…

My God how delicious would it be if Tottenham win the final against Utd! But what if Utd win against Tottenham? Which is better? F**k Alaves, let’s watch the most torturous final ever!

Cowlick

The state of European football

I mean honestly, how sh*t are the rest of the European teams if the 14th and 15th teams in the Premier league make the semi finals?!

AD, (someone needs to tell Guehi he didnt actually sign for us, thats the 2nd goal he’s scored for us this season) NUFC

Three underdog teams winning in spectacular fashion? Yes f**king please. What a night! United in the final, please.

As long as we beat Bodo. Which as we all know is anti-bantz and definitely NOT Spursy.

Jon

Poor Liverpool

Oh no, poor old Liverpool. Such a poor club. Shame Vinnies email comes on the same day Liverpool announce Van Dijks 400k pw contract for a 33yo. Like all good clubs there’s a few fans making the rest look ridiculous (Arsenal are famous for it).

There is a brilliant success story here with FSG. They average around 5th for wages last few season and you can’t argue they haven’t consistently overpeformed this. They are brilliantly run, they spend when they need to, they replaced one of their greatest managers ever with one who is about to win the league in his first season. They have spent over half a billion pounds and have pleny of trophies to show for it. Tbey have no financial constraints and are able to pay 2 of the best players in the world the salaries they are demanding. Why on earth would you want these owners out? Because they haven’t bought a 100m pound player every season? Its like people saying they want Arteta out after probably 3 consecutive 2nd places. Madness.

Rob A (he’s does realise Kroeknes now own more of Arsenal than they did a decade ago right?) AFC

Vinnie Pee. I have supported Arsenal my entire life. I suspect that during those 48 years, you have never met and never will meet me. How do you know that I am horrendous? I hope you aren’t making a ridiculous generalisation based on zero facts?

Steve Lynch

Cups v progress

Wednesday night belongs to Arsenal. Fair play to them for comprehensively outplaying the school yard bully of the Champions League. Best of luck in the next round or two. From a psychological POV getting past Real will buy a lot of self-belief, will it be enough to push them all the way? Who knows, but I expect this campaign will live long in the memory of those fans no matter how it turns out.

Now that that is out of the way, it sure is a fun time to be a Newcastle fan these days. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a fall off of performance after the Cup win, but it really seems to have instilled more belief and spurred them on to greater heights. Trippier seems reborn after an extended rest in Lewis Hall’s shadow, Harvey Barnes is excelling with a much needed extended run in the team and the Isak/Murphy partnership continues to be more productive than it has any right to be. The injuries that could have derailed things have instead revealed how the strength in depth is a little better than was feared. They have gone from the worst GD in the top 7 a couple of weeks ago to the best outside the top 2. Not sure if they’ll finish in the Top 5, but particularly since mid-winter its been the most enjoyable season I’ve seen them have.

Again this brings up something I’ve pondered here before and we’ve seen debated particularly among Arsenal and Man U fans – cups vs progress. Are Ten Haag’s cups better than Arteta’s second place finishes? I figured that you could really only judge it in retrospect. Lots of progress that leads to winning nothing will diminish with time, but trophy wins are forever (unless you’re Man City maybe). However, 2 years ago Newcastle lost the Cup final, but qualified for the CL. The CL bought us Tonali (I can’t see him being bought with a Cup win and Conference League qualification). Tonali in turn has been instrumental in winning the Cup this year and maybe getting back to the CL. So now that we have a Cup eventually, I think the progress that season was more valuable than an earlier Cup win would have been.

I’m already looking forward to see who might be recruited this summer and a return to Europe.

Derek from Dundalk

Semis for the ages

This might be the best set of semifinalists we’ve seen in the UCL in a long, long time.

– They’re clearly 4 of the best 5 teams on the continent at the moment (Liverpool can count themselves unlucky to go up against one of the other 4 but they didn’t really deserve to get through PSG so not too unlucky).

– The 4 best managers on the continent will be on display, with Arteta being the only one who hasn’t made a prior UCL final.

– All 4 teams are a success of the collective and team ethos, instead of relying on individualism. Not that they don’t have world class players but despite having 4 different systems on display, all of them share one thing in common – the team comes first. There’s a reason Arsenal, Inter and PSG swatted away the likes of Madrid, Bayern and Liverpool respectively who all rely too much on individuals producing magic moments.

– Most importantly, there’s no clear standout favorite! You could see each of the 4 teams winning it at this stage and equally find arguments on why they might not. It’s very rare to have this level of equity in the competition at this stage when there’s clearly a team everyone is looking to avoid. Instead, we have 4 brilliant teams, all with their own unique systems and game management styles, duking it out.

This genuinely might be a UCL semifinal stage for the ages. Especially given that 2 of these teams have never won the competition before and the other 2 haven’t won in over 10 years. We’re finally about to see something unique in this competition in well over a decade.

Regards,

Falooda in NY

READ MORE: Champions League prize money: Declan Rice has paid his record Arsenal fee back

The Arsenal discourse

Is there anything more predictable in football than a team putting in a good performance and rival fans pouring out of the cracks to remind happy supporters they haven’t won anything yet?

The fact of the matter is that there’s no divine right to win anything in football. You can do everything right all season and still come up short in the final moments, that’s the beauty of the game. The margins are tight at the top, especially when up against other amazing teams. Trophies are absolutely a barometer of success (rightly) but judging a team purely through that lens is stupid when those opportunities are few and far between. We all follow our teams for the moments of joy they bring us throughout the season and not just for what happens in May.

For Arsenal, this is compounded by the fact that so many people outside the club simply don’t like the manager but refuse to admit it’s because they were wrong about him and he’s very good. There’s a reason the likes of Alex from South London or others telling off Arsenal fans are always leaving snide remarks about some other manager taking over Arsenal.

There is no bigger disparity between the perception of the manager and what he’s actually like than Arteta in the entire league. John Nicholson, Will Ford, Gary Neville etc are all constantly reminding everyone why they don’t like him with not an ounce of self-consciousness. Every excuse thrown out for why Arteta isn’t liked (his supposed touchline naughtiness when he’s not even in the top 5 worst managers in that regard, his supposed excuses when he absolutely refuses to make any, etc) is bogus. These only exist in a reality where someone refuses to hear a single word Arteta says and his determination to set the culture right at the club.

A whole lot of those whining can’t admit they don’t like Arteta because he’s indeed an excellent manager and they’ve refused to update their evaluation of him. The wider media class in particular is wedded to this narrative that he’s a moaner (see comments earlier this season about Carabao ball, injuries, etc.) when the reality is entirely the opposite. I’m sure it riles up people outside the club when Arsenal fans are loud and obnoxious about their manager and don’t care for the views of those on the sidelines, but that’s the reality with all good clubs.

So I for one am looking forward to how Arsenal do in the semis. There is no other manager in the league, none, who gets more results in big games regardless of circumstances. He’s the most tactically diverse manager in the league, capable of playing suffocating attacking football or frustrating deep blocks all with the same identity. There’s a reason that Arsenal, despite having the weakest squad on paper with no forwards, multiple injuries at FB, both their deep lying midfielders out against PSG and no experience at this stage, are still given respectable odds to progress. And it’s because of Arteta. So we’ll cheer him on because we know what we have, you lot can continue to whine if he “accidentally” wins anything.

– Falooda in NY

Footballers not the same as fans

Dear Editor,

This last couple of weeks, both in terms of football and mailbox letters, reminds us that footballers might be fans, but fans are not footballers (or managers).

Even former footballers are now more fans than footballers.

Prior and to after Real’s visit to London and subsequent humbling, the fanosphere bleated on about what Arsenal should do, the fear, the big stage, over celebrating, having won nothing yet and so on. What Arsenal did, by the way, is turn up with a plan and score three. Professional and unencumbered by the narrative.

Then we had the build up to the return leg. Again, the armchair pundits went on and on about Real’s magic powers, scenarios of when goals would be scored, squeaky-bum time etc. Even off BBC coverage of Arsenal’s training which picked out every detail and presented it as hoodoo or some cultural oddity. The game, controlled and professional. And won.

If Arsenal had lost and Real had progressed it wouldn’t have been because fan advice went unheeded.

And now onto the next round. Macca and co reminding everyone that nothing has been won. And in a moment of high-level concept thought, the like of which not seen since the George W Bush era of logic articulation, we get ‘ You cannot lose to PSG. Otherwise, you have just got to the semifinals and lost.’ (Mcmanaman 2025)

What special vision do we think we have? Some magical, soothsayer insight. To outline clearly that if Arsenal lose in the Semifinal they have lost in the semifinal.

True and meaningful insight. Profound.

That’s up there with ‘what you have to do is score more than you concede if you want to win at football.’ Or maybe even more instructively, ‘you’ve got to kick the ball in the back of the net’.

So it’s clear, we as fans have opinions, they’re not that deep really, they keep us amused and quite rightly we are kept away from intervening in what happens on the pitch (outside singing, cheering and stuff)

Alexander