The manager’s credibility has been so undermined that not even repeating the FA Cup win of 1990 could avert the sack
Manager’s credibility has been so undermined that not even repeating the FA Cup win of 1990 could avert the sackhis isn’t 1990, but it isn’t 2016 either. Alex Ferguson may have kept his job by winning thein 1989-90 while Louis van Gaal learned of his dismissal while celebrating on the pitch at Wembley after the 2015-16 final, but the difference in the situations wasn’t just to do with the diminishing value of the FA Cup.
Ferguson’s route to the final had been via a preposterous series of tight and tense games, none of them at Old Trafford, only one against a top-flight club. There was a narrative quality to them: for United the FA Cup that season came to seem like a quest, each round – the Mark Robins winner against Nottingham Forest, the whistle from the crowd at Hereford, the 3-2 at Newcastle, the– a trial to be overcome en route to the grail.
The waning status of the FA Cup cannot be denied. The competition seems constantly to be scrabbling for survival, grudgingly squeezed in by an elite who seem far more interested in lucrative friendlies in emerging markets than the oldest knockout competition in the world. It would always have been ludicrous if Ten Hag’s fate had come to rest on a single bounce of a ball, a refereeing decision or a penalty shootout.
And yet there has been something otherworldly about this run to the final and in that sense, even in the way United have scrambled past lower-division opposition, there has been an echo of 1989-90.probably isn’t advisable as a longer-term strategy but it made those ties memorable. By staring humiliation in the face, United have given those games a significance that would not have been there with a more straightforward victory .in there, and Robins himself popped up in the semi-final.
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