Brighton fans will feel they owed Manchester United one when it came to the FA Cup.<\/p>\n
They might have won on their last three trips to Old Trafford prior to this season, but in this competition, they had nothing but painful memories.<\/p>\n
The biggest was that 1983 ‘Smith must score’ FA Cup final, when Seagulls striker Gordon Smith’s shot in the last minute at Wembley was saved by Gary Bailey, thus denying them victory, with defeat following in the replay.<\/p>\n
Three seasons ago, the two sides met at Wembley again. Most observers felt Brighton were clearly the better side in the semi-final, but it was United who prevailed, on penalties.<\/p>\n
This time Fabian Hurzeler’s side got the win they deserved.<\/p>\n
Aside from the opening couple of minutes, when goalkeeper Jason Steele denied Diogo Dalot and Bruno Fernandes, Brighton looked the more dangerous.<\/p>\n
The 12th-minute opener came after Georginio Rutter’s shot from Welbeck’s cross was booted off the line by Patrick Dorgu and Gruda pounced on the rebound.<\/p>\n
Welbeck claimed the crucial second goal as, while Sesko’s late header lifted the home fans, Brighton’s players kept calm to confirm a third-round exit for United for only the third time in 41 FA Cup ties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brighton fans will feel they owed Manchester United one when it came to the FA Cup. They might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-689631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115878431916794597","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}