Manchester United beat Arsenal in FA Cup, Spurs edge past Tamworth, Buffalo Bills march on
Ruben Amorim’s team win heavyweight Cup clash on penalties, Tamworth denied Spurs replay, Kei Nishikori stages Australian Open fightback
The prime minister of the UK, Sir Keir Starmer, was among a number of prominent figures who publicly opposed the scrapping of FA Cup replays from this season.
An Arsenal supporter, Starmer might feel even more strongly after Manchester United dumped his side out of the third round on penalties overnight. No sympathy for Arsenal here, however. It was the big guys who wanted to abandon replays as a means of clearing their calendars for more games in the bloated Uefa Champions League, and to ease the workload on their gigantic and expensively-assembled squads.
Congratulations to the bright sparks who waved this through, too, for denying Tamworth a trip to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The National League side’s tie with the Premier League team finished goalless, before Spurs spared their blushes in extra-time.
It is with the FA Cup third round, which, in another thumbing of the nose to tradition, is being dragged out over five days this year, that we will begin to bring you up to date with what happened while you were sleeping.
Plucky underdogs United
It is a condemnation of how far Manchester United have fallen that the fact they have avoided defeat at Liverpool and Arsenal in successive weeks is being interpreted as a sign of revival.
