The Athletic FC.

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akimolere.

Manchester United have confirmed their place in next season's Champions League.

So what do the club need to handle being back amongst Europe's elite?

In with us for this one.

We have Adam Craft and we've also got Laurie Whitwell as well.

So we have to start with Manchester United's victory over Liverpool or O'Traford on Sunday.

A win secured their place in next season's Champions League.

Laurie, great start by Manchester United.

Flair, poise, all action,

the crowd were in on it, a really good first half to say the least.

Started right out of the gates, didn't they? Fifteen minutes, two-nil up. And that's the kind of

start that I think United fans became accustomed to, you know, under Sherlock Ferguson.

And certainly in a game of such significance against survival like Liverpool,

it felt like that was the required beginning. It was explosive, quite muscular, I think,

you know, sort of in terms of United wanting to dominate Liverpool in a physical sense and

kind of go straight for their throats. It kind of reminded me in parts of the way that United

used to go up against Arsenal at times

and kind of just go straight for the jugular really rather than try and build into it with possession or whatever.

So yeah, it was an encouraging opening and good to see a VAR call go United's way more recently

because they have had a bad rub of it.

Maybe we can get into the manual details of Benjamin Sestko's fingernails.

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