Edinson Cavani and Anthony Martial scored late goals as Manchester United took a 2-0 victory over Everton 2-0 in the fiercely cold Goodison Park on Wednesday to set up the League Cup semi-finals with rivals Manchester City.
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United wasted many opportunities in the opening stages, and sometimes the game was bad on both sides, as the game seemed to move towards penalties, before Cavani collected the ball on the right wing, jumped inside on the left foot and fired past the Everton goalkeeper Robin Olsen.
Martial added a second with virtually the final kick of the game, as the visitors now meet City for a place in the final on April 25, while Brentford take over Tottenham Hotspur from the championship in the second last four clashes.
“It was a great performance and we were supposed to be out of sight, we had three or four big chances. We need to be more clinical,” United captain Harry Maguire told Sky Sports
“We are expected to win trophies. It is important to get to these big games, but we have to start winning them and pick up some trophies for this club.
Everton will feel outraged that the influential Cavani was still on the field after receiving only a verbal warning from referee Bobby Madley when he pushed Yerry Mina to the ground with his hands near the throat of an Everton defender in an out-of-ball incident. first half.
But since the Video Assistant Judge (VAR) was absent from this competition until the semi-finals, there was no further action when the replays showed that Cavani was lucky to have avoided the sanction.
His quality proved the difference in opening Everton’s solid defense, while Martial’s security goal came to a standstill, while the home team pushed their bodies forward in search of an equalizer.
United holds their excellent record away from Old Trafford and now have no defeats in 20 home games in all competitions, winning 18 of them.
The guests dominated the early exchanges and put Everton under pressure with a series of lost chances, Cavani approached twice.
Everton have finally woken up from their slumber because, along with 2,000 fans at Goodison Park, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Gylfi Sigurdsson both had an effort on goal that was saved by United keeper Dean Henderson.
The second half had a bit of a spark of the first, both sides mistakenly added passes in the attacking third, and neither goalkeeper had any more serious defenses until Olsen threw the ball out of his net to open Cavani.
Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti was disappointed that his side could not achieve a favorable result.
“We did enough to win – a good performance we needed to defend, which we did well, but more in the second half,” he said. “We had a tough start, but after 20 minutes the game was under control – we didn’t play enough attacking football, but we had to defend and until the last 20 minutes we did well.”