Round 4 of the Capital One Cup kicks off tonight with Arsenal hosting Chelsea at The Emirates in the pick of the evening’s matches.
Having beaten West Brom in Round 3 through penalties, Arsene Wenger will be aiming to put one over on old foe Jose Mourinho, who he is facing for the first time since his return to English shores.
Both sides will be expecting a high scoring affair considering their Round 4 clashes last year had a cumulative total of 21 goals, with Arsenal beating Reading 7-5 and Chelsea beating Man Utd 5-4.
Elsewhere this evening Man Utd will host Norwich and will be aiming to build on their 1-0 win over Liverpool in Round 3 of the Capital One Cup. There are some exciting match-ups outside of Manchester as well with Birmingham playing Stoke, West Ham travelling to Burnley and Leicester facing Fulham.
Get involved in the debate on Twitter using #CapitalOneCup and comment on our live blog (below) to get your opinions heard! Will Chelsea edge Arsenal, or will Wenger’s side prove too strong? Let us know!
This mix of regular first-teamers and our lesser lights never really seems to work. Bendtner is totally out of touch and cannot take advantage of the attacking moves being made by Cazorla and Wilshere.
Arsene should either put out our best eleven or our most promising reserves. Don’t mess with a mix.
I can’t agree more nicky. This I feel is a tactical mistake (rare, but does happen). Now at 0-2 with 20 minutes to go, I feel the best we can hope for is Ozil and Giroud knackered after 120 minutes, just in time to host ‘pool. Not my idea of a good time. Either we go for it or we cut our losses and get on with the league.
Really disapointed with the consistent lack of crossing delivery from the wings with ryo and jenkinson both very guilty
Seems we all agree on that. These mixes DO NOT WORK. The co-ordination during mixes are not good, Chelsea looked and were the better team, love their formations, we could learn from that. All in all i am glad, we have reduced our games now, for although our squad is strong, we are not yet that strong to play that many games, but we are getting there.
Mind you, if not for our injury list, we would have performed much better in this game, hope Walcott, Ox, Flamini returns to the fold soon.
Bitter after-taste. Least important match of the month, but I would have rather lost 0-5 with our cup team. Worst part was it was really really predictable as soon as the lineup came out. Hindsight my foot. At least Giroud and Ozil didn’t play too long.
Still those glaring mistakes are horribly visible in our defence.
Let’s hope for better things on Saturday.
Its only the CoC, can’t decide whether I want to feel relieved or feel down. Think I’ll go with relieved:)
I’ll repeat what I said a month ago about Bendter – why does he get another chance? He doesn’t know which way is North. If Giroud gets injured, we’re finished. This game only strengthened my belief that we need to spend in Jan on a competent backup striker. And none of this ‘walcott can play there or podolski can play there’ – we’ll need them on the wings based on the performance in that area of the pitch tonight as well. Very disappointed with Jenkinson and Ryo. Rosicky was careless and had poor body language throughout also. Jack and Kos were the only players I’d say performed well.
Best by far to forget tonight and consider the coming weekend when our league momentum needs to continue against Liverpool.
If we HAD to lose against a better team on the night, let it be in the Capital Cup and not something important.
Here are the only plausible arguments for how B52 played:
1. A year in Italy has actually led to him only knowing how to pass sideways and backwards.
2. No one told him we switch sides at half, thus he thought he was playing forward passes to our midfielders running towards the Chelsea goal.
3. The rubber on his hair is somehow cutting off circulation to his brain.
4. He is an average player with the vision, pace, and awareness of a blind paraplegic whose had one too many at the pub.
Personally , I don’t care we are out of this competition but it’s a shame we lost to Chelsea. Make no mistake , this was an important step in Mourinho’s quest to instill the air of invincibility into his squad regardless who he plays.
Without naming them individually ( we all know who they are) some Arsenal players aren’t good enough at this level.
Giroud created more in two minutes than Bendtner in his entire outing
should have set out youth team would have been more fun to watch…
I don’t agree about Rosicky. I thought he fought hard and played well.
Pat, I agree, Rosicky tried really hard tonight. The important thing now is for the team to regroup for Saturday.