***Champions v Rags FA Cup Final Official Match Thread***

[nottsblue]

All this talk of Casemiro being this season’s best signing. Not even close to Rodri as a DM.

And he cost £70m at 30 and was given a 5 year contract at 300k+ a week. Let’s see if the rags are still raving about him next season and the season after. When he is even slower. And misses more and more games through suspension and injury

[Mase]

All this talk of Casemiro being this season’s best signing. Not even close to Rodri as a DM.

And he cost £70m at 30 and was given a 5 year contract at 300k+ a week. Let’s see if the rags are still raving about him next season and the season after. When he is even slower. And misses more and more games through suspension and injury

He’s not even as good as Stones as a DM

[PeterParker]

All this talk of Casemiro being this season’s best signing. Not even close to Rodri as a DM.

And he cost £70m at 30 and was given a 5 year contract at 300k+ a week. Let’s see if the rags are still raving about him next season and the season after. When he is even slower. And misses more and more games through suspension and injury

He is ok, but Casemiro's luck is he played most of his career at teams protected by the establishment: Porto, Real, rags.
Put him in a different team and he would get sent off every month.

[KinkyKinkladze]

Only just got home. What an absolute pig shit place to get to and from when the trains are off. Cockney wankers.

Rodri and Stones absolutely fucking immense. Jack started well but bissaka put one on him and it clearly bothered Jack who seemed to go into his shell because of it and from there we let united grow into it. The penalty was a fucking joke though and I knew as soon as it happened they'd do anything to get var involved. Weirdly not a single person around me had a clue why a penalty was given, no replays were shown. It created a massive sense of nervous injustice in our fans and we sat resigned to knowing the fa will do anything to stop us winning today. That on top of haaland being pulled all over the shop in the first 20 minutes, akanji being banjoed and then de bruyne not being given an obvious penalty we were all fucked off at once again feeling like we were playing the establishment, not a game of football.

Thank fuck for gundo.

Haaland did well, should have scored but he was busy. Ruben a rock. Stefan superb, well done on a great cup campaign to him. Walker was worrying against the little prick garnacho. Phil looked very good when he came on. He might have done enough to start ahead of jack on Saturday.

A fucking great day out. 40 years old and Gillingham aside, I finally got to see city lift a trophy in person.

Up the fucking blues. I want John stones cock rammed into my willing gob.

[Mase]

I’m still raging that they tried to fuck us with the officiating. I knew they would but not to that extent and not so blatantly. I had fans of other teams texting me raging that it was a disgrace.

We need to say something because they can’t get away with that! We saw it at OT as well. These rules that are brought in for City and then suddenly they’re changed after we play the rags.

Was great to hear Jack calling it out in every interview he did, starting it straight away with “How was that a penalty?!” Good on him! Anyone else say anything to call out the cheating?

[zuricity]

David Coute was VAR ref yesterday , he has been awful all season , been involved in some very dubious calls in several games - not just City games

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/footb ... r-30147851

[salford city]

David Coute was VAR ref yesterday , he has been awful all season , been involved in some very dubious calls in several games - not just City games

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/footb ... r-30147851

I saw a pic of his profile at HT with the swamp in the background. Imagine it is fake, but would not surprise me if it was true. Im going to go back and read this thread now. We got back around 1215 so not so bad. Going to enjoy my sunday lunchtime beer today - get those inter shirts out - those of you who have the balls / decency to come out

[Wooders]

I’m still raging that they tried to fuck us with the officiating. I knew they would but not to that extent and not so blatantly. I had fans of other teams texting me raging that it was a disgrace.

We need to say something because they can’t get away with that! We saw it at OT as well. These rules that are brought in for City and then suddenly they’re changed after we play the rags.

Was great to hear Jack calling it out in every interview he did, starting it straight away with “How was that a penalty?!” Good on him! Anyone else say anything to call out the cheating?

Let’s face it, but for a gundo wonder goal and crap keeping from a crap keeper for the 2nd, they’d have succeeded in screwing us out of the win yesterday

[Mase]

I’m still raging that they tried to fuck us with the officiating. I knew they would but not to that extent and not so blatantly. I had fans of other teams texting me raging that it was a disgrace.

We need to say something because they can’t get away with that! We saw it at OT as well. These rules that are brought in for City and then suddenly they’re changed after we play the rags.

Was great to hear Jack calling it out in every interview he did, starting it straight away with “How was that a penalty?!” Good on him! Anyone else say anything to call out the cheating?

Let’s face it, but for a gundo wonder goal and crap keeping from a crap keeper for the 2nd, they’d have succeeded in screwing us out of the win yesterday

100% It can’t carry on. We’ve had it blatant twice not against them. Something needs to be said

[Original Dub]

Just from this build up I can tell the ref is going to fuck us

Bump

[Mase]

Just from this build up I can tell the ref is going to fuck us

Bump

It was too predictable. All about the rags and their history and how good they were and Ferguson and ETH being class. It was lined up for us to get a good bumming from the officials.

[KinkyKinkladze]

Would just like to also add the city fans, especially all the lads behind the goal, were magnificent. Noise and limbs as if it was our first ever cup final.

[Mase]

Would just like to also add the city fans, especially all the lads behind the goal, were magnificent. Noise and limbs as if it was our first ever cup final.

Could only hear our fans on BBC. Didn’t hear one rag song

[salford city]

Serious request: If anyone's got a spare flag from the game, PM me.

PM SENT

[salford city]

Just watched the 5 mins highlights on the beeb, you can hear the discussions in the studio talking about their pen - don't think the beeb know

[nottsblue]

Just watched the 5 mins highlights on the beeb, you can hear the discussions in the studio talking about their pen - don't think the beeb know

What was said?

[johnny crossan]

Pep’s own Crazy Gang combine beauty and graft
Only Guardiola can create a side who play like Barcelona one game and Wimbledon the next


Martin Samuel
Saturday June 03 2023, 6.20pm, The Sunday Times
The beauty of Barcelona, the humility and endeavour of Crazy Gang-era Wimbledon. That is what makes this Manchester City team special.

They scored not only the fastest goal in FA Cup final history — timed at 12 seconds after kick-off — but quite possibly the most direct too. No tiki-taka, tippy-tappy here. City went back to go forward and, going forward, took route one. Yet like Wimbledon, City are about so much more than that. Yes, a long ball and a set piece got them over the line here, but it was their work ethic that shone through, the willingness of such fine players to run, to chase, to harry, to put in an old-fashioned shift. The greats do that.

They are not scared to get sweaty, to show that it doesn’t all come naturally. No one swans, no one saunters. Well, no one that is going to get in a Pep Guardiola team, anyway. Even the manager, in a break in play when the Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea went down injured, worked like a madman, arms waving, bouncing from foot to foot as he recapped the strategy with his players.

City were made to slog against United at Wembley, but did not shy away

This wasn’t a match like the one against Real Madrid. This wasn’t City playing exhibition football in a competitive situation. City were made to slog, because the Treble is at stake and Manchester United, its protectors, had even more to lose than usual. They also had to come back from a significant blow when the referee, Paul Tierney, and his VAR, David Coote, combined to make it plain that unless modern footballers jump like penguins these days, they run the risk of giving away penalties. That fate befell Jack Grealish and, without it, United would never have got back in this game.

Yet get back they did and, as a result, City had to go again. More graft, an odd splash of beauty and, eventually, the best team won. Yet this is a resilient team, a hard-running team, a team built in the image of not just the most beautiful but the most battle-hardened. They are not the Crazy Gang in terms of their antics — no one gets a punishment beating or a jockstrap slyly filled with Deep Heat, and the entire contents of the manager’s hotel room, including the wardrobe and bedside table, aren’t placed in the lift on pre-season trips — but City are crazy in the way they are willing to work, they are crazy in the effort expounded to get here, one game from the greatest greatness. Today’s performance showed they can play it all ways, like David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, who could lick ‘em by smiling, or leave ‘em to hang.

Today the smiles waited for the trophy celebrations and until that point, City were all business. As for the goals, truly the Crazies would have been proud. From a team capable of such great complexity, that record-breaking first was an object lesson in the long ball game. 1) From kick-off, Bernardo Silva passed back to Stefan Ortega, who delivered a perfect huge diagonal ball to a centre forward, Erling Haaland, in an overloaded area. 2) Anticipating that the challenge would be won, City had players running in behind United, ready to also win the second ball if it got knocked down. 3) When that happened — Kevin De Bruyne getting a fortuitous rebound in a duel with Victor Lindelof — Ilkay Gundogan then hit a shot on target, first time, at the earliest opportunity. United were caught completely off guard. If he was watching at home, Dave Bassett would have been smiling.

The second wasn’t far removed from the Wimbledon playbook either, a De Bruyne free kick that curled out towards Gundogan on the edge of the area, and another early hit that somehow, again, was the last thing United were expecting. Gundogan became the first player to score two goals from outside the area in an FA Cup final since David Herd in 1963, when United beat Leicester City 3-1. Of course, much has changed since then, not least Manchester United’s motto, which would now appear to be “live and don’t learn”.

Guardiola celebrates with captain Gundogan, who scored both of City’s goals

So that’s the goals. Yet what of the endeavour? Is there any team prepared to get as many players defensively around the ball as City do? The sheer ferocity of it, the way they crowded out United in midfield where players like Christian Eriksen and Fred were hopelessly outmatched. There are very few teams prepared to work like this. And it’s a stellar group, one that could easily be lost to ego and indulgence. Yet just as Sir Alex Ferguson did in his Treble-winning prime, Guardiola persuades them to deliver more and more again. Grealish, De Bruyne, Haaland, Silva, players that could easily decide they have given enough, continue to be the hardest working acts in showbiz.

Of course there is a Treble at stake, and who couldn’t be inspired by that? Yet there have been many good teams through the years and few Double winners, let alone three-times champions. It’s hard, winning this consistently. It’s never easy, even for a team of City’s immense talent. And matches like this prove it. United were considered inferior and they were; but that’s not the same as being comfortably brushed aside. There were moments of genuine danger, particularly when Alejandro Garnacho came on, yet City stood tall. The game ended with Haaland, arguably the greatest striker in the world right now, running the ball into the corner like an underdog stealing time. He wasn’t too proud for that, not to proud to do sweaty, not too proud to show it was tough. There will be another time for beauty, maybe in Istanbul. Today, City were happy to win stage two ugly — and crazy too.

[zuricity]

FFS Samuel get it right ! How can we take you seriously if you can't get the basic facts right ?

It was Gündo's second touch of the game . He kicked off not Bernardo . What do these Journos watch ?

[zuricity]

At least the Rag fans proved that the Wembley Fire drill is very efficient in Emptying the Stadium in seconds.

[gmercer1]

Watched in the pub with loads of Rag fans and other clubs fans and every single one of them said that no way should it have been a pen for them. Just shows the blatant cheating