FA Cup final: 'Where has this Man Utd team been?' - Alan Shearer
Where has this Manchester United team been all season?
That's the question you have to ask after seeing such a magnificent performance from Erik ten Hag's side to win Saturday's FA Cup final.
For large parts of this campaign, the kind of resilience, desire, discipline and work-rate that United showed to beat Manchester City at Wembley has been missing.
I saw a team out there with every player on the same page, all battling and fighting for each other, not just showing great ability but showing the desire to win every tackle.
As I said to Ten Hag when he spoke to us on the pitch after the game, that has not always been the case when I've watched United this season. If they had played like that every week, they would not have finished eighth in the Premier League.
Ten Hag puts his side's poor performances down to injuries, but every team has had plenty of those this season.
I know United have been hit particularly hard at the back, where they have used 15 different centre-half partnerships in 52 games in 2023-24, but there is more to it than that.
Even when a team is missing injured players they still have to go out and give everything but there have been many occasions when there has not been the right body language or attitude from United's players, which is why they have sometimes been criticised for a lack of effort.
Not on Saturday, though. They were almost perfect, even when the going got tough in the second half. They stuck together and got through it because they did the dirty work as well as the pretty stuff really well.
