“It’s in our minds that last year we were so close and yet so far,” says Aoife Mannion, as Manchester United prepare for a second consecutive FA Cup final.
Last year, United lost 1-0 against Chelsea, Sam Kerr’s 68th-minute strike postponing dreams of a first major trophy. This season, United are struggling in the Women’s Super League, losing 1-0 to Liverpool in their most recent fixture to sit fifth with a game to play, but a first win over Chelsea took them to the final at Wembley.
Taking strength and confidence from that is inevitable but Mannion says the Cup run will have no bearing on Sundaytomorrow’s game against Tottenham.
“I don’t think that the FA Cup final is going to be a cumulative effect of results and performances on the way,” the defender says. “The final is a complete one-off game. So, even though we have had some good results, for example beating Chelsea for the first time, I don’t think that’s going to have anything to do with the game. It’s just going to be all about us and Spurs and taking memories of good moments in the past is not really going to play into it.”
That’s not to say they didn’t celebrate the feat. “It was obviously really nice at the time, and we obviously celebrated the significance for us as a club, beating a team that we hadn’t beaten before,” she says. “That kind of good feeling carries on for a few days, but as with everything in football, after a few days, there’s another game to go into.”
The defeat of Chelsea may have no bearing but the loss to them last year is a huge motivator. “That experience is like such a massive driver,” says Mannion, a 79th-minute substitute for the left-back Hannah Blundell at Wembley last May. “The fact that we weren’t able to win the final last year just gives us all the more impetus and makes us so hungry to try to win.”
Mannion’s season has been one of ups and downs. In fact the past five years have had more downs than ups, the defender having sustained back-to-back anterior cruciate ligament injuries, in October 2019 and February 2022. A torn quad last September forced her out until February but a recent run of three starts in a row, against Everton, Chelsea and Tottenham, has her back in contention and thriving.
“If you’d asked me in February how I was feeling in my body, I would have said my sharpness was at 90% rather than 100%,” the 28-year-old says. “But over the past two months, being back in the mix, I feel like I’ve gotten sharper and sharper. I feel at the races basically, physically and mentally, which I feel grateful for.”
The process of recovering from the quad injury and getting back into the team was frustratingly slow. “I came back not as quickly as I’d wanted to, even when I was back with the squad, and then all of a sudden it kind of swung around and I managed to be on the pitch more in the space of a few weeks than I had in maybe the two years previous to that … When you get that taste for being on the pitch, you want more and more.
“If you play 108 minutes in a game but the game was 110 minutes long, you want those extra two minutes. Now, I feel in a really good place, a really motivated place, and I feel very fortunate to be in the mix for conversations about the FA Cup final.”
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United cruised past Tottenham in London in December in the league, but the reverse fixture, three weeks ago, was much tougher for them, Spurs coming from behind to lead at Leigh Sports Village until Maya Le Tissier’s 92nd-minute equaliser ensured a 2-2 draw.
United are the firm favourites at Wembley but Mannion says: “There’s not going to be any room for complacency in the final. In a way, it was a dress rehearsal. We’ve seen how good they are in terms of players and quality that they have on the ball, so hopefully that’s really, really switched us on even more.”
For Mannion, enjoying the moment is important. Enforced time away from the game has taught her a lot, including the importance of finding balance. “As you get older you just get to know yourself a bit more,” she says. “You’re a little bit wiser through age and through experience. So maybe I feel a little bit more balanced. But I always find that when you go back into training you are always just so excited, regardless of what experiences you’ve had or what you’ve been filling your time with.”
What has she filled her time with? “I coach my little village football team,” she says. That began in 2022, when the demand for a girls’ team had prompted the club to look at setting one up. By the time of the Euros final that summer they had enough interest to fill way more than one team. Now, almost two years on? “We’ve got five teams,” she says.