For the third season running, we have drawn Bolton in the FA Cup, in 2005 we faced them in the 6th round and a Freddie Ljungberg goal gave us a narrow 1-0 victory at the Reebok. Last year we faced them at the Reebok again in the 4th round where we lost 1-0, after a late Stelios header.
This time however, we are at home, and its our turn to beat them in the cup, I think Bolton will play for a draw and take us back to the Reebok, which nobody wants.
We could of had a worse draw, but Bolton have been our bogey team over the past few seasons, but usually away from home, they somehow got a 1-1 at Highbury last season and I think we have a great chance of progressing. Bring the Fuckers on.
It is perhaps the biggest draw of the round, if you think of the two sides recent history. Other ties worth a mention are
Chelsea v Nottingham Forest and
Manure v Pompey.
Spurs will play either Southend or Barnsley if they can beat Cardiff at Shite Hart Lane. Come on you taffies!
After his mecurial performance on Saturday Tomas Rosickyhas been talking about the possibility of playing at Wembley come May.
“This Cup has such a history, and it can be just as difficult as the Champions League. It doesn’t matter if you have PSV in the Champions League or Liverpool in the FA Cup, they are both hard games.”
“Wembley is a big incentive for me because I have never played in the stadium. I remember seeing a couple of games from the European Championships in England when they played at Wembley. It is just a huge stadium and it would be great if we could get to the Final.”
“We have shown already that we are capable of beating big teams. We have beaten Liverpool twice, we won at Manchester United and we almost won at Chelsea. We are losing points against the smaller teams and we have to solve that problem.”
Errrr, yep. Couldn’t agree more.
Exciting young prospect Anthony Stokes has left Arsenal for good and has signed for Championship side Sunderland. Where he will link up with fellow countrymen Niall Quinn and Manager Roy Keane, which was one of the main reasons he decided to move to the North East.
It’s quite a strange one to be honest, because we have been hearing about this kid for a few months now, scoring all the time for Falkirk, which included 3 hat- tricks and a player of the month award. Then when he returns from his loan and is sold immediately to another club. I’m not sure I am that disappointed because I’d never heard of him until he was scoring goals in Scotland, not because I don’t pay attention to the Reserves, because I do. Wenger said last week that we have a lot of strikers, 3 of which are still on loan ; Lupoli, Bendtner and Vela, the other has been sold. Lupoli will probably leave Arsenal and Bendtner leaving is a possibility. If we sell Aliadiere, which is highly likely and not a bad move that means we have 3 strikers. Perhaps Walcott and Baptista can be considered strikers, but with Baptista’s current situation, It seems like he won’t be extending his loan deal come the Summer, so maybe we should buy somebody? I’ve always like Darren Bent, not sure if he could do the business at a bigger club, but he certainly stepped up to the plate when he moved from Ipswich to the Premiership.
This is only a possibility of course, not saying that it is happening or it should happen, but it’s not a bad option. We shall see what Wenger does, he maintains that he will not buy anybody in this window, but if we end up selling players like Aliadiere, Larsson, Ljungberg, Lupoli and Bendtner etc, then he will have to consider bringing somebody in. Because I’m fairly certain that at least 2 of those players will be departing Emirates this month, Larsson and Aliadiere I think.
Moving away from Transfer news, Abou Diaby has returned to First team action by being drafted into Wenger’s 16 man squad for tomorrows Carling Cup game against Liverpool. Diaby was cruelly injured 8 months ago when some Sunderland nobody broke and fractured Abou’s ankle. Which meant he missed out on the plane to Paris on the 17th of May.
Arsene made these comments on his comeback and other injuries -
“We have Diaby in the squad for the first time and Emmanuel Adebayor is very strongly coming back. Blackburn is possible for him,”
“Lauren is not in the squad for Liverpool, he has a small toe injury. William Gallas will not play either. But basically the only real injury is Ljungberg, he needs one more week after Blackburn.”
“That is why I said for a long time that I won’t buy anyone. I knew I had enough players when they came back from injury.”
The news on the other player is incredibly frustrating, as it was expected William Gallas would return for the Carling cup game, and god knows when he will play for Arsenal again. It was also said that Adebayor would be back for Blackburn but now that looks unlikely, Van Persie and Eboue picked up knocks at Anfield on Saturday, but Wenger hasn’t said anything about them, so perhaps that was an absolute load of old crap.
That’s it from me today, I’ll have something about the Mickey mouse cup game at Anfield in the morning.
Bye.
Posted by romfordgooner 