april 12th
09.54 – Good news, somebody!
Arsenal’s injury crisis appears to have lessened considerably, and apart from Robert Pires, everyone is available for selection fo the FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield United. That said, it seems as if AW will not be taking any chances and will rest some players. Stuart Taylor will continue in goal, Oleg Luzhny should play at centre-half, and true to form, Gilberto, Bergkamp and Thierry will be on the bench. Edu will come into the centre of the midfield, Ray Parlour or Sylvain Wiltord will play on the right, and up to we’ll have Wiltord/Kanu and Franny Jeffers.
There will be a practice match on Sunday for the players that don’t travel to Old Trafford, to prepare them for the league game on Wednesday against Man Utd. The last time Arsenal played Sheffield United in the cup was when Steve Bruce was in charge and he threw a strop after Kanu had broken and unwritten rule by taking the ball when Ray Parlour was throwing it back to them after one of their players was injurd. Kanu squared it for Overmars who scored the winning goal. 2-1 Arsenal. But, in the interests of fair play the game was replayed, and Arsenal won it 2-1 again. Dennis Bergkamp scored a beauty if I remember correctly.
If we do make it to the final, Freddie Ljungberg could become the first person ever to score in 3 consecutive finals. He’s also revealed that Arsenal are ‘envious’ that Man Utd are still in Europe and that the players are determined to do a Double-Double. This is certainly crunch time in the season now – there’s a lot riding on these next couple of results. Fingers, and everything else (apart from testicles) crossed.
For you weekend browsers, don’t forget you can now become an Arseblog member, and gain access to an exclusive area, get your own arseblog.com email address and other cool stuff. More details here, and you can see a preview of the latest addition to members area – a wallpaper featuring Alan Sunderland just after scoring the winner in the 1979 Cup Final – here.
Right then, time for some brekkie, some Soccer AM, then I might just watch the two Uniteds kick lumps out of each other.
