You don’t need to be ABU to feel for March and Brighton, but that FA Cup final has all the #narrative

A Manchester Derby FA Cup final will be fun, especially if City are still in pursuit of the Treble, but we feel badly for Solly…

It had been a good game, but a slightly strange one. Both teams played well without either Manchester United or Brighton really being able to argue they’d done quite enough in 90 or 120 minutes to truly deserve to win this FA Cup semi-final.

Maybe it wasn’t strange. Maybe it only felt strange because two good teams playing competently was so wildly at odds with what we’d witnessed earlier in the day.

But both teams deserved credit. Brighton for stepping up and performing in such a huge game, United for the speed with which they’d put Thursday night’s Europa horror against Sevilla behind them.

Brighton saw more of the ball, and the fact that is a perfectly normal and predictable thing for them against Manchester United may seem a trite and patronising “look how far you’ve come” kind of observation but worth making nevertheless. This was a cat’s-arse-tight game between equals. Brighton weren’t the heroic plucky underdogs playing above themselves; they were the team they’ve been all season, except with a cruelly timed reversion to the xG banters of old.

Even here, though, more credit is due to United’s defending than blame attached to Brighton’s finishing. David De Gea – the worst offender on Thursday night – had a fine game across 120 minutes before once again turning into a hologram in the face of six admittedly fine penalties, while the resolute nature of United’s performance in the absence of three centre-backs was highly admirable.

Admirable felt like the word for this game. Everyone was admirable. Everyone was good. There needn’t need to be a figure on whom the result is pinned. Which is, of course, the cruel irony of any game that goes to penalties: by definition, the game has been close and by definition some poor sod is about to be the central figure in defeat.

And you really don’t have to be an Anyone But United hardliner to be a bit gutted it has to be Solly March, one of the stories of the season and whose career-defining season after a decade of service with the Seagulls will now always have this unwanted and undeserved asterisk against it.

He was a surprise absence from the first five takers and he took a honkingly bad penalty in a shootout full of quite strikingly good ones when forced to the spot in sudden death. As ever, though, while March’s place in infamy is assured…