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Manchester United Fixtures

It hurts like hell

Fuck.

That hurt.

Robben couldn’t do it, Joe Cole couldn’t do it, Rooney and Ronaldo couldn’t do it. Even Giggs – the FA Cup hero – couldn’t do it.

Ok, so maybe Giggsy got the goal but if the linesman and the ref don’t see it (and Cech sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them), it doesn’t count. That sucks, but what sucks more is that after Smith’s tackle on Mikel we switched off for a bit and Chelsea got the goal by moving quickly off the free kick.

A moment of inspiration from Drogba, sheer class by Lampard and then the harder-than-steel determination to finish it off – Drogba may not be the best finisher but this season he’s got them when it counted the most and he made it count again this time.

To keep things in perspective, this was a pretty good season – final of the FA Cup, semifinals of the Champions League and Premiership winners.

But I’m a greedy bastard, and I want more.

Several members of this team have now lost two FA Cup finals – not to mention suffered the humiliation of a group stages exit and being knocked out twice by Milan, once in the second round and this time in the semis.

It’s time that this team – those players – stood up and said that enough was enough, that they had learned from their experiences, that it fuckin’ hurt to lose after giving it their all and running all out for 120 minutes, and that they will improve from it.

The players’ eyes showed that they were hurting, so maybe that bit’s taken care of.

For United, the season is effectively over. It’s time to evaluate, process and come back stronger for next season.

I’ll be doing a 5-day season review starting Monday (similar to the season preview I did in August) – let’s take a couple of days to let the whole season sink in.

We did well – we did great – but we have to improve.