Hello and how are you? Hopefully excited and nervy as a jumping bean and counting down the hours and minutes to our showdown with Manchester City in the 2026 Carabao Cup final! Nice!
Let’s face, it’s great to be in a final, and it’s been a while (2020’s Covid Cup final). Calling this one though is beyond me, I lay there last night before sleep thinking about the possible permutations and came up with nix. This one could play out in any which way? What do you think?
One thing, I hope we can put to bed an especially painful moment for me in our last league cup final back in 2018, when we were soundly beaten by City. The worst moment for me was watching the bench cam and around the 65 min when they scored their third. It wasn’t that it was the final nail in the coffin that hurt so much, to me the Arsenal had looked zombie from early on, but it was watching Wenger on the sidelines waiting to bring Danny Welbeck on. The goal goes in and Arsène spins around looking for hope on the bench and goes back to the game and just rests his hand on Welbeck’s back as a sign of comfort, knowing it was over. Man, that one tore me up. In fairness, City were excellent that day, but like SE Hinton wrote: that was then this is now.
I think on Planet Arsenal we need the same sort of day-out and good cheer that Newcastle had last year, and it’s very possible. Of course City are struggling a bit this year, but here they are still in a final, still second in the league, and still in the FA Cup.
Five subs are allowed, including a sixth if it goes to extra time.
We go into this one, with several uplifting and encouraging recent results under our belts. So, the rest I leave up to Areta and Co. Here’s to us! COYG!
Statto HQ phoned through the chances and they reckon Arsenal FC at 39.4% and Manchester City FC at 31.2%. Next up the FA Cup quarter finals against Southampton, at Southampton. So COYG!
Mills
Win this and it could be the first of an unprecedented quadruple, lose it and we can still win the treble that United fans have been dinning out on for 27 years. So although there is a lot riding on it, there is a lot of opportunities, and huge ones, still to come.
I’m hoping Pep’s ego wont allow him to shut up shop and it’s a good game. I also hope we open up somewhat and we all enjoy a good game of football that gives us a decisive win.
Pedantic George.
Positively Arsenal 
Sweden won 3-2
Turkey beat Kosovo 1-0 to reach world cup too.
other two games are going to extra time, Italy down to ten men since first half
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Czechia win 3-1 on penalties to reach the world cup
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Bosnia & Herzegovina beat Italy 4-1 on penalties to reach the world cup, is it really a world cup if Italy are not there.
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Anybody born after 2014 has never seen Italy at the world cup
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I see both Max and Ethan are still scoring goals for the U19s and U21s respectively.
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Chelsea Women v Arsenal Women in the CL quarter final second leg is live now on BBC2 and the pundits and commentator have made it clear they are on Chelsea’s side.
Arsenal XI: Van Domselaar, Fox, Wubben-Moy, Catley, McCabe, Mariona, Little (C), Russo, Smith, Foord, Blackstenius
Substitutes: Borbe, Votikova, Codina, Hinds, Holmberg, Pelova, Maanum, Mead, Kelly
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Catley off injured just before half time, Hinds on
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HT: 0-0
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jayus the BBC pundits can’t hide their disappointment that Chelsea aren’t winning
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FT: Bayern Munich Women 2-1 Man Utd Women
Bayern win 5-3 on agg
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this ref is very fond of giving Chelsea handy freekicks
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Mead on for Smith
Holmberg on for Fox
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Blackstenius makes it 1-0 to Arsenal,
VAR checking for offside
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ah fuck, it had to be millimeters offside
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Maanum on for Blackstenius
Codina on for Mariona
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chelsea hit the post
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Van Domselaar with a wonderful save, pushes the ball on to the post and it bounces out and is cleared. We have dropped back too deep and are allowing CFC to come at us
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Mead hits the post at the start of five minutes of stoppage time
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fucks sake after we messed up a couple of good chances Chelsea score, less than two minutes of stoppage time to be played
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katie macabe just dragged a chelsea player to the ground to stop a breakaway and the ref didn’t see it
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chelsea manager has been given two yellow cards.
she was rightly upset at mccabe not getting booked for pulling the cfc players hair, but she kept whinging
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FT: Chelsea Women 1-0 Arsenal Women
Arsenal Women win 3-2 on agg, come on you Gooners, and fuck off chelsea
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Brilliant from the ladies again but amazing VAR didn’t see the hair pull after the ref missed it.
Anyway after selling their women’s team in a FFP scam Chelsea don’t deserve anything and really should be relegated.
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I’d say Katie McCabe will receive a retrospective red card for that hair pulling incident in stoppage time
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ian did you see that Chelsea have posted the biggest losses for a year by any EPL club ever, and that even if the qualify for Europe they may not be allowed to enter as they were already under sanctions for previous losses
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Arsenal Women will play the winners of Wolfberg v lyon, with the germans 1-0 up from the first leg, second leg is tomorrow
bayern munich will play winners of barca or real madrid in the other semi final, very likely barcelona as they are 6-2 up from first leg
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Yeah Ed, I saw that. They have only complied with the PL because they sold their women’s team to one of their own subsidiary companies. Obviously learning the scam of city.
Unfortunately big money teams play under different rules to the rest and will only ever receive fines or suspended penalties.
Chelsea will not get thrown out of Europe and city will not get anything other than a fine for the 115 odd thing charges they face. They have already said city can’t be relegated because the football league is a different league and they haven’t committed and rule breaking while being in that league.
As with the rest of the world wherever their is big money their is corruption and the being the richest league in the world the PL is infested with it.
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if Arsenal beat Southampton on Saturday, our EPL game against Newcastle will be played either Wednesday 22nd April or Thursday 23rd April
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That’s the weekend that city play Burnley, probably their easiest game of the run in.
It is really important we lay absolutely no priority on those cup games. We could literally throw our title chances if we lose players to injury or fatigue because of the cup run.
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I don’t agree Ian, if we lose to Southampton tomorrow, after the league cup final defeat, the whole place will be on a downer, and with the CL quarter final first leg midweek, our whole season could come crumbling down. We need to get back to winning, in all 3 competitions we have left. There is only a maximum of 15 games left to play across the 3 competitions.
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I don’t think the first team would be on a downer if a very weak youthful side lost to southampton if indeed such a side would necessarily lose.
Ironically Southampton cannot afford to take to many risks either as they are very much in a four way tie for the playoffs and any injuries could potentially cost them millions.
Three wins from bournemouth, city and newcastle would almost guarantee the league.
It is such a critical time in the league any risks with other competitions is folly.
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The other thing is 15 games doesn’t sound a lot but it would be across just 8 weeks. The strain on the squad if city don’t drop points would be immense.
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George, sent a short preview over for the Southampton game.
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It’s up.
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