Manchester United Thump Arsenal

Edwin van der Sar

Manchester United beat Arsenal to the tune of 2–0 in the FA Cup Quarter Final at Old Traf­ford on Sat­urday. Goals from Fabio da Silva and Wayne Rooney won the game for the hosts and knocked Arsene Wenger´s Arsenal side out of the FA Cup. Goal­keeper Edwin van der Sar made a num­ber of breath­tak­ing saves dur­ing the highly excit­ing encounter between the two Premier League giants and was deservedly named man of the match.

The Manchester United play­ers entered the game on the back of two dam­aging res­ults against Chelsea and Liv­er­pool respect­ively, while the North Lon­don­ers had lost the Carling Cup Final to Birm­ing­ham City before they were knocked out of the Cham­pi­ons League by Bar­celona. How­ever, Fabio da Silva opened the scor­ing in the 28 minute of play when the Brazilian hit home from close range after Manuel Almunia in the Arsenal goal could only parry a header from Javier Hernan­dez.  Wayne Rooney then put Manchester United two up just four minutes into the second half when he headed home a superb cross from Rafael da Silva. With only seven minutes remain­ing on the referee´s clock, Arsenal lost Johan Djourou for the rest of the cam­paign as the cental defender dis­lo­cated his shoulder after a col­li­sion with fel­low team mate Bacary Sagna. The vic­tory against Arsenal sent Manchester United into an FA Cup Semi Final show­down with Manchester City next month.

Paul Scholes was lucky not to be sent off for a chal­lenge on Samir Nasri.

The Offi­cial Illus­trated His­tory of Manchester United