Having had time to reflect after watching the game live and seeing the televised highlights last night, my opinion was that of a rather lacklustre match, lacking in the usual passion that accompanies Arsenal/Man United matches, and that a draw was just about the right decision. Chances at either end, some great goalkeeping by Roy Carroll, and some woeful finishing by United, notably Scholes and van Nistelrooy.
The referee although receiving a fair amount of criticism IMO got the big decisions correct. Henry, minimal contact by Silvestre, he had already lost control of the ball and was going down under his own momemtum.Giggs,again, little or no contact, but what ther was, was outside the penalty area, and a free kick at the most, lastly Reyes, watching it live, I thought that Carroll hade made another good save at his feet and could not understand his protestations of a corner, but having seen the incident replayed, it would appear that he did make contact with Reyes, but would I have liked a penalty given against my side for it is very debatable, so I accept the decision.
I would take issue with Mr Poll over the two yellow cards that he handed out, both were innocuous tackles, not even worthy of a free kick. The only other incident worth a comment was the Vieira tackle on van Nistelrooy, we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, much the same as SAF and Arsene did, IMO he got the ball, but I accept that most of you will take a different view, and as the resultant free kick was not match-changing it doesn't really matter.
Was here anything to learn from this match to carry forward to Villa Park, I don't think so other than the fact that we are seemingly equally matched and that it will take either a tremendous goal, or an outrageous piece of luck to separate the teams. Looking forward to a better match, where I suspect the passion will be up several notches, as there is a definite chance of silverware for both teams if they win the semi-final, as opposed to yesterday's game, where to all intents and purposes Man Utd could have only slowed Arsenal's progress to the inevitable EPL title.