16 Conclusions: FA Cup semi-finals

Daniel Storey

* That ‘What a waste of money’ headline continues to look completely idiotic. Few could have foreseen just how magnificent Anthony Martial would be in his first season in England, but nor too should anyone have written off a player on the basis of his transfer fee. For the same outlet to do exactly the same with Kevin de Bruyne only makes them look more foolish. The need for striking back pages to sell newspapers is obvious, but to denigrate a new signing so explicitly with so little evidence was asking for trouble. So it has proved.

Martial has been a revelation and a sensation. There has been a running theme throughout this season that he has been unfairly stationed on the left wing, a prized possession treated like an afterthought. Saturday’s semi-final was emphatic evidence that he is growing into the role.

Playing as a wide forward will stifle and strangle some, but others can revel in it. Martial is able to pick up the ball and run at his full-back, but also has the knack of cutting inside with the ball or drifting infield without it at just the right moment to cause confusion in the opposition defence. Confusion equals time, time equals space and, with Martial, space often means a goal.

Rather than being constantly under the noses of central defenders, this fluidity actually helps Martial have the element of surprise that makes him so effective. It’s impossible not to draw comparisons with Thierry Henry’s transformation from left winger to world-class forward. At Martial’s age, Henry had scored 20 senior goals and had one French cap. He’s already ahead of that curve.

 

* If one young forward enjoyed a superb day at Wembley, another endured a less successful outing. Having been left worryingly isolated over the last two months by a side unable to provide enough service for their striker, Romelu Lukaku fluffed his chance when Everton finally got their s**t together.

Lukaku has scored 45 goals since the beginning of last season, but his finishing still leaves room for improvement. That might be counteracted by his hold-up play, strength and ability to manufacture his own chances, but for the money Everton will demand this summer, elite clubs may want something a little more polished.

Perhaps I’m being slightly harsh. Saturday was Lukaku’s 101st match since the beginning of last season, an extraordinary amount of football for someone so young and with such pressure to be his side’s source of goals. It’s also worth pointing out that Lukaku’s chance conversion this season is better than Harry Kane’s. It’s all about portrayal.

 

* Why oh why isn’t Leighton Baines taking all Everton’s penalties? It might sound like one of those issues only touched upon in hindsight after Lukaku had his penalty saved by David de Gea, but a club sharing the duties almost never ends well.

Baines’ form has dropped off significantly after injury, but he is still the best penalty taker at Goodison, having scored 25 of 26 in his career. That one black mark was a save made by De Gea, but surely Baines cannot be so mentally weak that he can only miss against every goalkeeper once?

In January 2015, when Kevin Mirallas took the ball from Baines and promptly missed the penalty, Roberto Martinez promised that the situation would not be repeated, but lacked leadership on the issue.

“The hardest aspect is to present yourself to take the penalty,” Martinez said. “Leighton Baines is our penalty taker. He has got an incredible record. For me, Leighton Baines is the No.1 penalty taker and at that point I was happy for Leighton Baines and Kevin to discuss it.”

I’m sorry, but that isn’t good enough. If Baines is the “No. 1 penalty taker”, no manager should be happy with players discussing the issue and changing that pecking order. That confusion cost Everton – and could cost Martinez – dear.

 

* And this surely is the end for Martinez. Winners and Losers last week wondered whether Everton’s manager would even make the semi-final, but the conclusion is that the Spaniard failed both of the two tests that would ultimately decide his fate. Everton is a club with new investors and new money, and there will be no surprise if they want a new manager to match.

Martinez cannot say he has not had chance to prove right the top-four ambitions that were conveyed to Bill Kenwright upon his appointment. After a strong first season, Martinez has taken Everton backwards. The manager has been permitted to invest in his squad without selling players. All he has created is a group of under-performing senior players and a trio of young stars who may each want to move this summer.

The most infuriating aspect of Martinez’s management is his head-in-the-clouds optimism, reminiscent of Brendan Rodgers in his last days at Liverpool. After the semi-final defeat, it was no different.

“We have handled our assets really well, the squad has a great valuation,” Martinez said, a generous assessment that we’ll let slide for now. “We develop young players very well and I share the drive the football club has, which is to get into the Champions League and to bring silverware back to Everton.”

Martinez might well share the “drive”, but Everton will be rightly concerned about his aptitude and tactical pragmatism, and the morale of the playing staff under his management. All three are more important than his own drive. Martinez is in danger of being lost in a sea of management speak.

“I just feel that every season we are developing and showing certain signs that we can please our fans and bring them the silverware they deserve but of course this is a difficult day,” Martinez concluded. That’s true if you ignore this season. And last season.

Supporters (and owners) can accept difficult days. It’s when those days come in difficult weeks, in difficult months, in difficult seasons that your job becomes insecure.

 

* However, if Martinez is finished then Louis van Gaal might just have a lifeline. FA Cup victory will surely not be enough for him to keep his job, but combining that with Champions League qualification might well be. The first part of the job is close to fruition.

More importantly for Van Gaal, this was an exciting, effervescent United performance, as rare as rocking horse manure during two years of miserable aesthetics. Some of their defensive solidity was abandoned as a result, but supporters left Wembley feeling more pleased with their manager than at any point over the last five months.

United have won four of their last five league games, but only one of their last five league wins since February has been achieved by a scoreline other than 1-0. Van Gaal is far from secure in his position – as he himself conceded after the game – but patience is a great deal easier to afford when your eyes haven’t been melted by the tedium of the performance. If Van Gaal can keep United playing entertaining football between now and May, the unlikeliest stay of execution could still be possible. Poor Neil Custis is going to waste away.

 

* Before World Cup 2014, Wayne Rooney was out of club form. With Daniel Sturridge firing and wanting to play centrally, Rooney’s England place was under threat. Roy Hodgson was effectively faced with four choices: 1) Leave Rooney out (never gonna happen), 2) Leave Sturridge out (never gonna happen), 3) Change England’s formation to play with two central strikers (never gonna happen), or 4) Find a different role for Rooney. And so Rooney played as a left forward.

Before Euro 2016, Wayne Rooney is out of club form. With Harry Kane firing and wanting to play centrally, Rooney’s England place was under threat. Roy Hodgson was effectively faced with four choices: 1) Leave Rooney out (unlikely to happen), 2) Leave Kane out (never gonna happen), 3) Change England’s formation to play with two central strikers (unlikely to happen), or 4) Find a different role for Rooney. Van Gaal might just have given option 4) a shove in the right direction.

Picking Rooney as part of a midfield three seemed to be Van Gaal shoehorning him into his starting XI on nothing but reputation, but that proved an unfair accusation as the match progressed. Rooney was, there is no doubt about it, excellent. He played a Steven Gerrard-type role, involving himself in as many actions as possible and leading by example. His headed clearance off the line was his stand-out moment defensively, but more positive still was Rooney’s discipline in stopping himself shooting from distance or playing Hollywood crossfield passes. Both were criticisms of Gerrard in the autumn of his Liverpool and England career.

Does this give Hodgson an extra option, particularly if England are without Jordan Henderson and Jack Wilshere? Kane up front, two of Danny Welbeck, Raheem Sterling and Jamie Vardy in wide forward roles and then Rooney in a midfield three with Dele Alli and Eric Dier? The thought must at least be crossing the England manager’s mind.

 

* Said it too many times recently (well, here and here) to go on about it again, so I’ll keep it brief: David de Gea is the best goalkeeper in the world on current form, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Manchester United supporters should make appropriate sacrifices to the gods of unreliable fax machines.

 

* Rooney was not the only Manchester United midfielder to surprise supporters with his performance. Marouane Fellaini produced perhaps his best display in a United shirt. There hasn’t been much competition.

It was the complete performance. Fellaini had seven shots (no player had more), two shots on target (no United player had more), made three clearances, blocked a shot, created two chances and passed the ball with an accuracy of 92.9%. His goal was an assured finish on his left foot, something we didn’t even know was possible.

 

 


 

 

* You can’t blame Watford’s Etienne Capoue for wanting to stay on the pitch and try to run off his injury, but it turned out to be a foolish decision. A minute later and the Frenchman was back on the ground.

The first time Capoue went off he limped from the field, but his eventual departure was on a stretcher, grimacing and clearly in some pain. The midfielder’s season is clearly over, but you just hope that Capoue hasn’t seriously exacerbated the injury.

 

 

* Only Watford’s players will know whether the rumours over the future of Quique Sanchez Flores affected their performances, but it can hardly have inspired them. Capoue spoke in midweek about how much the players wanted their manager to stay, and any uncertainty before such a big game is unlikely to help their performance.

In the first half, it showed. Watford looked lost on the big occasion, playing more like 11 individuals than a team. They pressed alone rather than in pairs or as a team, easily passed round by Palace’s midfielders and left chasing shadows. When they attacked, too often they resorted to crosses into the box from deep. Occasionally they passed the ball with some verve in midfield, but it was the exception to the rule, the infrequent reminder of an enjoyable autumn before the rot set in in spring.

If this is to be the end of Flores’ tenure at Watford, he will leave with a great deal of sympathy. Having taken over from a manager sacked after gaining promotion to the Premier League, Flores must have suspected that the Pozzo family had itchy trigger fingers, but it doesn’t make his departure any more fair.

Flores was permitted to spend last summer, but managed to knit together the new signings with the existing squad almost immediately. Watford were seventh at Christmas, survival effectively secured at that point with 28 points taken from 17 matches.

Watford’s run since Christmas has been poor, of that there is no doubt. But Crystal Palace have suffered exactly the same fate, with little indication that Alan Pardew is set to lose his job. They are a far more established Premier League club than Watford. Who better do the Pozzos really think they will get?

 

* One of the criticisms of Yannick Bolasie – and reasons he has not yet moved to a bigger club – is that he doesn’t score enough goals.  “The gaffer has been on to me about getting more goals, and today I have taken a step in the right direction, hopefully,” Bolasie said last year after scoring a hat-trick against Sunderland. He’s scored only five in all competitions since.

Bolasie was therefore an unlikely candidate to head home at the back post from a corner but, left unforgivably unmarked, his task was simple. It was just the second headed goal of the Congolese’s career, but the most vital.

“Players like him are the ones I’ve got to look at and if I can add more goals to my game then it will only improve me and the team,” Bolasie said about Emmanuel Adebayor after the striker arrived at Selhurst Park. Adebayor would not have positioned himself any better.

 

* Connor Wickham is an easy striker to forget, as harsh as that sounds. As a 23-year-old English striker who has twice moved for more than £5m, his name should be at the forefront of everyone’s minds with a major tournament approaching. Instead, it feels like his career has been in second gear for at least two years.

Wickham’s obvious issue as a striker is a lack of regular goals, scoring in small bursts rather than a consistent threat. Between a spell of five in three games for Sunderland in April 2014 and four in two games last month, Wickham had scored just seven times in 57 matches. That’s an appalling record.

Having started on the bench for three of his last four Palace appearances, it was a surprise to see Wickham start against Watford, but he paid his manager back five times over. Papa Soare’s cross hung in the air and thus needed the addition of power; Wickham did the rest, aided by a lame effort from Ake to put him off. The striker will be making suitable hints to his manager about a place in the team against Manchester United in May.

 

* Why is everyone on BT Sport allergic to red cards? Firstly Miguel Britos was deserving of a red card, dismissed by commentator Darren Fletcher. Next came Scott Dann, who committed a clear offence deserving of the second yellow, only for Howard Webb to say that it wasn’t deserving of a booking because it was “a big game”. Does that suddenly make a difference?

The piece de resistance came, predictably, from Steve McManaman. Despite Mario Suarez clearly tripping Wilfried Zaha to stop a counter-attack, McManaman praised Craig Pawson for not sending off the Spaniard because… wait for it, “there are only a few minutes left”. Well that’s fine, then.

“Nobody likes to see red cards,” said Fletcher in response. I bloody love to see red cards, especially when they’re given for red card offences.

 

* Wilfried Zaha might have suffered disappointment on his return to Old Trafford on Wednesday, but the winger was the best player on Sunday. Those two England caps may still end up as a quiz answer in a decade’s time, but the 23-year-old is finally getting his career back on track.

Most impressive is not Zaha’s crossing or dribbling, but workrate. His tracking back with Nathan Ake stopped Joel Ward being swamped, and Zaha could then bring the ball forward from deep. He is a dangerous weapon on the counter-attack.

That only Mile Jedinak had more touches of the ball in the match despite Zaha playing as a right winger indicates his importance as Palace’s attacking outlet. That no player was fouled more times demonstrates that he had Ake’s number.

 

* This might be my favourite football photo of all time. I’m calling it either ‘Crystal mess’ or ‘a Chunky night out’.

 

 

* A final word for Wembley, a stadium that comes under significant fire when the FA Cup semi-finals roll around. An England supporters’ blog described the atmosphere as ‘a national embarrassment’, with at least a nod in hyperbole’s direction.

It’s true that the days of Villa Park et al held a great deal more romance than Northern supporters journeying down to the national stadium on rail replacement services, and occasionally Wembley does let itself down. With supporters sat further back from the pitch and a large corporate seating section, the lack of passion and fervour can sometimes infiltrate the game itself.

This year’s semi-finals were the perfect antidote to the criticism. Two superb matches were played against the backdrop of excellent atmospheres. It’s easy to forget that the ‘romantic’ Villa Park holds far less than half the number of spectators at Wembley, meaning that allocations are not limited to those who travel to every away game. The ticket prices were still extortionate, but that’s hardly a problem exclusive to the FA Cup.

At its worst, Wembley is a non-place, a footballing shopping mall or departures terminal. However, it is not sentient. Given the right fixture poised at the right time, the match can easily overcome the atmospheric issues. For once, you almost didn’t miss John Motson or Barry Davies at Villa Park.

 

Daniel Storey