FA Cup semi-final/ Arsenal 0; Manchester United 1: Manchester United booked a place in the FA Cup final and put down an even more important marker. Arsenal cannot avoid twisting their necks to glance back at it even as they pursue the Champions League and Premiership trophies.
Arsene Wenger's team now know for sure that they have not made themselves unassailable in England.
Having held Arsenal 1-1 at Highbury the previous weekend, Alex Ferguson can brandish the win as corroboration of his claim that the Old Trafford club is in the throes of rebirth. On Saturday no one could possibly tell him the future belongs solely to Arsenal, who lost their chance of a third consecutive FA Cup.
There are limits to the reassurance. Wenger sees no comparison between the current United line-up and the team of 1999. With tomorrow's return leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Chelsea to come, he invited his own side to treat this result as misfortune, rather than a reprise of the defining failure at the same stage of the competition five years ago that ruined their season.
He is right. Then, United thundered on to a treble that Arsenal cannot now replicate. This time Ferguson has done no more than make it likely the trophy cabinet will not be entirely bare. The mortifications of the past few months do seem, however, to have rallied support.
A period of relative hardship can be the start of regeneration. Some of the crowd behaviour was ugly and the Arsenal physio Gary Lewin, serving as an unwitting human shield for Wenger, was hit by a coin. Even so, there was a rejuvenated passion among United fans, whose fires were also rekindled by the combativeness on the field.
At times, as Wenger complained, it was nasty. There was unseemliness, with Jens Lehmann bowling over Cristiano Ronaldo, but the dangerous violence was United's.
Roy Keane went unpunished for a hack at Robert Pires and Wenger was rightly appalled by Paul Scholes's dreadful challenge on the substitute Jose Antonio Reyes.
It will sideline the Spaniard for three weeks with medial ligament damage. The general hurly-burly also left Freddie Ljungberg with a broken hand that rules him out of tomorrow's Champions League match.
Nonetheless, Wenger should concede that United were the markedly better team in the entrancing first half that decided the game. The teenager Ronaldo, starting to understand his gifts, used his tricks pragmatically to open up a yard on Gael Clichy and deliver his crosses.
Darren Fletcher (20) proved, with a durable and tidy display beside Keane, why Ferguson is so eager to pick him. Wes Brown's recovery of form and fitness comes belatedly for United, but he may be in time to make the England squad for Euro 2004.
The 31st-minute goal, though, was assembled by four of the men of 1999. Keane sent the ball to the superb Gary Neville and, with Clichy stuck out wide, he hit a piercing pass to Ryan Giggs on the right of the area. The Welshman's cut-back was driven home by Scholes.
Arsenal never recovered. Their best moments came when the game was barely begun. An Edu header put Dennis Bergkamp through for a shot against the legs of the goalkeeper Roy Carroll that broke back to the Dutchman. His chip was cleared by Brown for a corner. From it, Edu shot against the bar and Kolo Toure's header from the rebound was well saved by Carroll.
Wenger, mindful that this was the first of four matches in nine days, started with Jeremie Aliadiere and only let Thierry Henry appear for the closing half-hour.
He will be damned for it, but a club like Arsenal ought to be adaptable and he noted that United had coped without the injured Ruud van Nistelrooy.
"It is ridiculous to reduce a team to one player," Wenger said of Henry. "I thought we created our best chances in the first half."
Anyone who dotes on football warms to Arsenal, but you can celebrate the stylishness without assuming they are an irresistible force.
United did not let them get into their syncopated rhythm.
"We lacked a bit of vision and simplicity around the box," Wenger conceded.
Wenger now has to bring about the immediate return of refinement. "It is a massive game and that must help us pick ourselves up," he said stoutly of the encounter with Chelsea.
Even so, Ray Parlour is injured, Sylvain Wiltord lacks match fitness after missing the last three months, and only Gilberto Silva can easily be recalled now that he is back from his game with Brazil to make up for the absence of Fredrik Ljungberg and Reyes.
In Wenger's mind the search for trophies is inseparable from the quest for football perfection. With his squad battered and weary, that will be a high-risk philosophy this week.
Guardian Service
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