From The Telegraph:
'Queuing outside Cardiff station on Saturday evening, the Manchester United fans were caught in yet another monsoon. In the comfortable dry of the stadium, Arsenal followers were happily celebrating their team's act of Cup larceny. Out there, the losers were getting a soaking. It summed up not just the day, but the season, one fan reckoned: a big black cloud dumping on their aspirations.
He had a point. What with hostile takeover and a year free of trophies, United's followers are caught in a deepening anti-cyclone of gloom. But even all that rain on their parade wasn't quite the perfect metaphor for what they had just experienced. That would have been delivered if they had made their sodden way on to the platforms, watched three trains turn up at once and then missed the lot.
All season United's fans have seen their team dominate opponents but fail to beat them. Fulham, Crystal Palace, Blackburn, West Brom and now Arsenal have all emerged intact from what threatened to be a pummelling. On Saturday, in the final act of a season of frustration, Arsène Wenger's side, temporarily stripped of their usual ambition and attacking élan, waited and waited and waited, then put the ball in the net five times when presented with the simplest route via the penalty spot. United couldn't even do that.
Yet despite all they had seen, the United followers outside the station weren't sure whether this last capitulation was entirely a bad thing. For some, there was the merest hint of silver lining in all those clouds.
"At least that should have knocked a few million off Glazer's asset," said one.
It is the irony of United's season that while the most expensive forward line ever assembled in British football has failed to deliver a single trophy, the one lone raider nobody wanted to see at the club has stealthily seized his chance and now has secured the prize. How that hurts. There may have been no mass demonstrations against Malcolm Glazer, no pitch invasions or effigies burned in the stands, but the depth of the dismay United fans feel about their new owner was evident everywhere on Saturday. Gloomily subdued throughout, at least half their followers were wearing black to make obvious their belief that this was less a final and more a funeral.
There will be much reflection as to what to do next. "I'm torn," said one fan. "On the one hand, I guess I really ought to walk away as it's not the club I love anymore. But on the other, I just can't get enough of watching Wayne Rooney playing football."
Indeed, on a day of almost unrelenting gloom, the thought of watching the Toxteth bulldozer developing next season was enough to sustain many a black-clad red as they made their damp, defeated, dismayed way home.'