The Warm-Up: Manchester United Mourinho their way to Europa League final

Glory, glory Man Utd. Fairly desperately clinging on against a second-rate team in a second-rate competition they never wanted to play in, with their manager using numbingly defensive tactics and having to rely on a Manchester City reject to lose his faculties in front of goal. And they say tradition is dead in football?

The commentator described John Guidetti's miss as one of those "Sliding Doors moments”, an instant where fate contorts in one direction when it could just as easily have gone in the other. After United had a goal disallowed in the six minutes of injury time against Celta Vigo, the Spanish side went down the other end in the final seconds and were *this* close to the away goal which would have sent them into the Europa League final at United’s expense.

Granted, Guidetti doesn't cover himself in glory - especially after promising to "keep Manchester blue” before the match, when as it turned out he had that covered himself - but a few things here:

Guidetti’s gaffe, if we can describe it as strongly as that, brought to mind the tackle with which Javier Mascherano stopped Lord Nicklas Bendtner from scoring in a Champions League match in 2011: the last-gasp goal would have sent Arsenal through, yet Barcelona went on to win the competition. The difference being that Arsenal hadn’t had a shot on target up to that point. Their progression would have been a total fluke.

By contrast, United’s would have been one of their own design after sitting back and making defensive substitutions against a pretty weak Celta Vigo side. It was… not quite what you associate with United. We shouldn’t be too picky: United have won the League Cup and are now in the final which can deliver the only European trophy they haven’t won, a place in the Champions League and a shot at the European Super Cup. But the outcome can only be viewed apart from the process for so long.

Jose Mourinho has only one thing in common with United’s best traditions: winning. It's enough. For now.

It wasn't just Mourinho who had to sweat it out. Despite being 4-1 up from the first leg of their semi-final against Lyon, Ajax were taken to within a goal of extra-time by Lyon, who at one stage saw Alexandre Lacazette score twice in under 90 seconds. Still, it is the extravagantly talented young Ajax who United will play in Stockholm, replete with a 19-year-old wonderkid to rival Marcus Rashford in Kasper Dolberg.

It's Ajax first European final since 1995 and their amazing victory over AC Milan in the Champions League, with Louis van Gaal as manager. Any chance King Louis joins the BT coverage for the final as chief pundit?

Chelsea's imminent title party is threatening to get a bit spoiled by persistent reports out of Italy that Inter are determined to get the man who made it all possible: Antonio Conte. Suggestions he is Inter's top choice were all over the front pages of the Italian press yesterday and, with Conte's family still living back home, he hardly painted his colours to the Chelsea mast in a press conference yesterday.

We are probably reading far too much into this, but...

Football history was made last night when the new ABBA penalty format was debuted, at the Women's Under-17 Championship in fact. And there's bad news guys: Germany still win.

'Roy Keane Slams United Performance' isn't exactly front-page news these days but he's always worth listening to as a leading member of the Fergie generation, those golden years when every game was won 5-3 and John O'Shea never played a match.

The Warm-Up likes to think it isn't just a sclerotic old boys' club. We welcome a plurality of opinion. It's just a complete coincidence that a day after Thursday's Warm-up had nice things to say about the work of Friday's Warm-Up, Friday's Warm-Up is repaying the favour. Truly, Jack Lang's deep data dive into Owen Hargreaves' superlative abuse is a thing to behold. Now, enough of this sickening display of back-slapping and back to cheap shots.

Normally this is the place where The Warm-Up would try and get excited about a mid-table Bundesliga battle, but praise be, this Friday we have some Premier League football - and a big game at that. If Chelsea win away at West Brom they will be crowned champions, while Everton take on Watford as well, for no discernable reason. Why not? You can follow both of those live with us.