After a truly torrid end to the year for Ruben Amorim and his men, it gets no easier for Manchester United when they kick off their 2025.
A trip to Anfield tomorrow is followed up by an FA Cup third-round tie away to Arsenal at the Emirates on January 12, which sees the two most successful clubs in the competition’s history lock horns early doors. You can be in attendance for the highly-anticipated contest by securing your seats now.
The Gunners boast 14 titles to United’s 13, with the latter adding to their cabinet just seven months ago when they emphatically overturned arch-rivals Manchester City 2-1 at Wembley Stadium.
Goals from young guns Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo, both academy graduates, inspired the – perhaps unexpected – victory, ensuring United enter this year’s campaign as holders of the renowned trophy.
How United fare heading into FA Cup clash
It could well be a worst-case scenario for Amorim leading into this term’s clash, though. His side are on the back of four straight defeats, having failed to score in their last 270 minutes worth of action.
Given that they last won at Anfield back in 2016 and last scored on Liverpool’s turf in 2018, they could head to North London with an absolutely treacherous streak hanging over their heads.
Meanwhile, Arsenal have endured fluctuating form at times since 2024/2025 got underway, yet have found their feet in recent weeks by recording four successive wins in all competitions and scoring 12 goals in that time.
Prior to the cup tie, they face Brighton and Hove Albion at the Amex in hopes of closing the gap on leaders Liverpool, who comfortably sit atop the Premier League table with a six-point advantage and a game-in-hand over the second-placed Gunners.
The last time United took to the Emirates was only a month ago in their first league meeting of the season. Two set-piece goals, courtesy of Jurrien Timber and William Saliba, sealed a 2-0 win for Arsenal in what was otherwise a cagey affair.
Post-match, Amorim rued his team’s inability to respond to Arsenal’s deadly corner kicks, saying: “We already knew that it would be a tough game. I think the corners changed the game, the set pieces. Then we lost the momentum. We tried everything to control the game again. You feel it in the first half – in the environment of the stadium – that we were causing problems. We needed to improve in a lot of areas of our game, but we were controlling the game.
“They are very good because they have a lot of time working on that. Especially on that, they have big players for that, so it is a strategy, and we had two weeks to work on that. We tried to do it, but we know every team in the Premier League is suffering with set-pieces. It was a shame because we were not playing very well, but also Arsenal was not playing very well.”
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