FA Cup Fourth Round : Manchester United 3 – 2 Liverpool

Super-sub Bruno Fernandes was Manchester United’s FA Cup match-winning hero as the Reds won a pulsating fourth-round cliffhanger 3-2 at Old Trafford against rivals Liverpool.

It was a thrilling cup tie worthy of inclusion in any catalogue of edge-of-your-seat matches between these two powerhouses. The match swung from one side to another and never let up throughout the 90 minutes.

Jürgen Klopp opted for five changes to his starting XI as Rhys Williams came into central defence and James Milner captained the side from midfield. Roberto Firmino, Curtis Jones and Salah were also brought in to form Liverpool’s front three.

Liverpool drew first blood after 18 minutes through Mo Salah. But the Reds indomitable spirit came to the fore again as we hit back through Mason Greenwood in the first half and took an early second-half lead when Marcus Rashford struck.

Jurgen Klopp’s side wouldn’t lie down, however, and equalised with another Salah goal in the 58th minute.

United once again brilliantly dusted themselves off and Fernandes’ free kick 12 minutes from time saw us through to a fifth-round home clash against West Ham next month.

Match-Stats:

Post-Match Reaction :

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer  on knocking out Liverpool:

“We really played some good stuff in periods. It was some good goals we scored. We have to defend well against them of course, and I think we managed to react well. Towards the end, there’s always some moments there but we kept them away. “

Ole on Bruno’s Free-kick

“Great goal, good free-kick. The thing is when you leave him out, like I had to do this time… I think he stayed about 45 minutes after training yesterday shooting free-kicks, so I was quite confident he was going to hit the target. He’s never happy with me when I tell him to go inside when he’s playing the day after, so he got some time to practice.”

Jürgen Klopp On going out of the tournament :

“It’s not what we wanted, so it’s frustrating. If you want to win tonight, you have to play at your absolute top. We weren’t on our absolute top, but we made a lot of steps in the right direction.

The start of the game was good, but then we made decisive mistakes; around the first goal United scored, we had too many options offensively and no protection. We lost the ball and then there was a counter-attack. It was not the first counter-attack in the game, so we have to improve that.

You could see the boys really wanted to change the fortune, they wanted to score goals and that’s good. We did that, we scored twice, which is good as well. That’s all OK but in the end they scored three, we scored two and they are through and we are not. That’s a fact as well.

We can take positives out of this game, of course – I saw a lot of steps in the right direction and that’s all good. It was good preparation for the Tottenham game with their counter-attacking threat. We know exactly what we have to work on.

If you are in a situation you don’t like, you want to get out of it. We want to get out of it and for that we have to make steps. Tonight we made these steps – not the final ones, but we made steps and that’s for the moment OK.”