Arsenal and Manchester United played out an engaging stalemate in a match both sides could not afford to lose. In the end, none lost as the title challengers and the champions cancelled each other out on a night of positives and negatives for both sides.
United can take heart from a rather rare solid defensive display that kept the Gunners at arms length all evening. David Moyes set up his side in pretty much the only way you can set up at the Emirates, on the counter attack. And his tactics can be justified on the premise that on another evening, we could have come away with all 3 points. Robin van Persie in particular could have got himself at least a couple if he had last season's boots on. To be fair to the Dutchman, he has got himself a good goal return since making his comeback from injury.
In the end, the point can only be frowned upon for a couple of minutes as David de Gea had to produce a couple of outstanding stops to prevent us from going behind late on into the match. That both goalkeepers ended up being up for the man of the match award tells you something about the edge of the tie.
United fans obviously look at the result in the grand scheme of things but in isolation, its a decent result. We've only let ourselves down in the other winnable fixtures, for instance a win against Fulham would have made this result all the more impressive. As it stands though, we're now light years behind 4th and the job now seems to be all about pride and finding a way of avoiding the Europa league next term.
In the meantime, the squad is off to Dubai--some reward for a poor season. I'm intriguingly thankful that it will be a while till we next see United in action. It was becoming all too much to take in in such a short space of time. Maybe they'll return next week with that red fire restored in their eyes.
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