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| Kobbie Mainoo and Alejandro Garnacho celebrate victory with Erik ten Hag, Manager of Manchester United, after the Emirates FA Cup Quarter Final between Manchester United and Liverpool FC at Old Trafford on March 17, 2024 in Manchester, England. |
Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has consistently highlighted his achievement of guiding the club to back-to-back FA Cup finals as evidence of success, yet that argument has been comprehensively dismissed by former United captain Roy Keane.
United will take on Manchester City in the end-of-season Wembley showpiece for a second successive year this weekend, with Ten Hag suggesting his record of taking the club to two FA Cup finals and a win in last season’s Carabao Cup final deserves to be celebrated.
Yet speaking on the latest Stick To Football with SkyBet show, Keane didn’t hold back in his rebuttal of that defence from Ten Hag, as he argued finishing eighth in the Premier League this season was more relevant than a cup run.
City beat United 2-1 in last season’s FA Cup final, with Keane suggesting that game was all-but over after Ilkay Gundogan opened the scoring after just 12 seconds of the match.
“The noise coming out from Manchester United last year after they lost the final was that they were almost patting themselves on the back for getting to the final. Cut that crap out,” said Keane.
“You have to turn up and put in a performance. Don’t go down after 15 seconds – give yourself a bit of a chance. The game was over after that – City toyed with them, took their eye off for a little bit and gave them a little bit of encouragement.
“You sit in that dressing room before the game, and you still have to look at your manager and the players around you.
"You can have huge respect for Man City, they are brilliant and their record is fantastic, and they could win the double, almost as a consolation prize to last year.
"But if you are a Man Utd player, this is my worry. If you haven’t got that belief, and you’re playing for Man United… I look at the manager and the staff and great managers to produce moments in cup finals and get their teams over the line.
"All these managers we mentioned earlier, I don’t think they’ve been favourites in every cup final they’ve been in. But you manage to find your way, or a system, or you get a player just back from injury, and it’s a cup final, you get us over this line. It can be done. It can be done.”
Keane’s former United team-mate Gary Neville suggested he will be scared to watch the Cup final as he feats City may hand out another beating to United, yet that pessimism can be banished.
“You are saying that you’ll be watching the FA Cup final behind the sofa,” he said to Neville. “That’s a sad state of affairs, if you feel you can’t watch Manchester United in a Cup final – there’s always that hope that they will turn up and produce some sort of performance.
“I look at this Manchester City game over the past few weeks – are they favourites? Of course, but you’ve still got to believe. You have to have some belief in United and that they can turn up at Wembley and produce a performance.”
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