The fourth Arsenal FA Cup Final in 5 years, we have all become very used to the trip to Cardiff. This trip had lots of added spice, being against Manchester United, possibly the team we love to hate the most at the moment (although Spurs and Chelsea obviously put up a valiant fight), the fact that this is the only chance of silverware for both teams this season, and the fact that United have just been bought by Malcolm Glazer, much to their fans' annoyance.
Very touchy, the Man Utd fans. For a group of people that can get over 20,000 people singing "sit down you paedophile" at Arsene Wenger, they seem to get very irate when similarly offensive songs are directed at them. In the last week, the geographical focus of their touchyness has instantly shifted from Munich to Tampa Bay. Which of course, is ideal - whilst some Arsenal fans can't stomach abusing United fans about Munich, all can easily bring themselves to hurl abuse about their new American owner, which the Mancs were taking predictably badly (several reared up and tried to fight, before being dragged away by police, hopefully to miss the game) all day long.
My group travelled to Cardiff by train, via Bristol of all places. A detour, but the tickets were only £25, and crucially, the fact that we didn't get a Cardiff train meant that the buffet car was open to serve us beer for the long part of the journey. Perfect. We arrived in Cardiff just after midday, and proceeded directly to the central Arsenal pub, The Gatekeeper, a huge place where getting served with a drink was all but impossible.
The game itself, well, it was quite a dull 0-0. mainly due to Arsenal's tactics, which seemed to be to stifle Man Utd entirely. United were quite clearly the better team throughout, and even by half time, there was not much optimism from anybody that we would be able to find a goal, even if were given until midnight to try. At full time, still at 0-0, there was slightly more optimism, only because we were only 30 minutes away from penalties, and, despite not having a great record at them, penalties really are anybody's game.
The penalties duly arrived, and for all of the Manc penalties, there was a fairly constant and impressive shout of USA from all of the Arsenal end of the stadium. Scholes did his duty and missed, everybody else scored. So it dragged on until Patrick Vieira slotted Arsenal's last penalty to win the Cup. Completely undeserved, if this had been a boxing match, United would have won on points by a country mile. But, given the number of trophies that United have won in the past by being lucky, they are probably the 1 team in the country that most deserve to be shafted out of a trophy in that manner.
The fact that we didn't deserve it, and we'd stolen the Cup from United, actually made it feel even better to have won. The gloomy look of the United fans, knowing they'd been robbed but that there was nothing they could do about it, was the icing on the cake. Not a great week for United fans - never mind.
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