Ruben Amorim gets his statement win as Manchester United show spirit to down Arsenal | OneFootball

United backed up their draw at Liverpool with a heroic win at the Emirates with 10 men

Manchester United’s last FA Cup victory ought really to have marked the end of one manager’s tenure. This one, with the same hindsight, may come to prove the hard launch of another.

It came, though, with caveats and questions. Could they go again, or was it a made-for-TV one-off?

With a spirited rear-guard display here at the Emirates, United answered in emphatic style, the holders knocking Arsenal out of the FA Cup with a penalty shootout triumph that gives Amorim the statement victory on which to hang his regime.

After an hour, they led, through a counter-attacking moment of quality from Bruno Fernandes that may well have been enough to settle the tie against an Arsenal side in their usual mode of dominance without threat.

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Diogo Dalot’s brainless dismissal for a rash challenge on Declan Rice while already on a booking, though, gave Arsenal a way back in and left United clinging on, playing the second half of 120 minutes a man down.

They were breached, but only once, by Gabriel’s leveller. Maguire produced his best performance in recent memory to lead the resistance, his surprise redemption arc now close to complete. Matthijs de Ligt followed in the former captain’s considerable slipstream with surely his finest display in a United shirt.

And the hero, perhaps destined to become a cult figure now, was Altay Bayindir in goal, who saved penalties from Martin Odegaard in normal time and then the hapless Kai Havertz in the shootout. A 5-4 victory echoed Arsenal’s in this fixture in the final 20 years ago.

A thousand seats of United’s allocation were left empty, but you would not have known as Joshua Zirkzee stroked the winning spot-kick, to spark wild scenes of celebration in a commandeered Clock End. There has not been a greater outpouring of United ecstasy since Erik ten Hag’s side won this competition in May.

They do, though, pose a different set of challenges, chief among them that of trying to avoid a) falling asleep or b) giving away corners.

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United had been undone on the latter front here two months ago, conceding twice from set-pieces in a 2-0 defeat that might easily have been an all-corner four.

The terms of engagement here though, were different, not least because neither of Arsenal’s primary takers - Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka - were on the field at the start. United came prepared, this time with three specialist centre-backs and a concessionary set-up that had all 11 outfielders back defending those deliveries from inside their own area. De Ligt and Maguire were excellent in the air and the bizarre decision to have Alejandro Garnacho marking Gabriel was corrected quickly after one set-piece.

From open play, too, the visitors were solid: by half-time Arsenal had had 60 per cent of the ball and completed 50 per cent more passes, but without a single shot on goal. That Amorim, prone early on to trialling (and often erroring) different combinations, named the same back-five for the third game in a row must surely have helped.

For that 45 minutes, though, United’s defence had been let down by a front-three lacking conviction on the counter, with Garnacho anonymous, Rasmus Hojlund willing but outmuscled and Fernandes strangely erratic in his use of the ball.

Yet when it counted the Portuguese showed his class. Garnacho pounced on Gabriel’s slip out wide and drove inside, picking his cut-back nicely but sending the pass into Fernandes on the same awkward bobble that Joshua Zirkzee had served Maguire in the dying seconds at Anfield. If Maguire was the last player United would want in that spot, then Fernandes would be clear as the first. His finish, with a precision that should be impossible to conjure off the ankle, was superb.

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After Dalot’s brain fade, the lead survived only two minutes and would have been reversed completely had Bayindir - whose game to that point had been defined by horrific distribution - not produced a fine low save from Odegaard’s spot-kick. It was a just result, with Maguire harshly penalised for a non-challenge on Havertz.

The melee that followed the penalty award was a throwback to this fixture’s clashes of old and Amorim will not have minded the show of collective spirit from his side. It filtered into their defending, Bayindir twice denying Rice. The only genuine let-off was when Havertz blazed a sitter over with United momentarily down to nine men while substitute Amad Diallo received treatment.

Into extra-time, De Ligt made a miraculous clearance from under the crossbar, but United began to make chances of their own, first Zirkzee and then Amad Diallo going close.

Penalties always looked the likeliest route to Round Four, though, and from the moment Fernandes won the choice of ends, you sensed momentum was United’s way. Amorim’s task now, after the week he has been waiting two months for, is to keep it rolling.