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Friday, January 05, 2007

FA Cup - 3rd Round - Liverpool vs Arsenal

It's the 3rd round of the FA Cup tomorrow - and I wish that I could somehow recapture the excitment I had as a kid about it all.

But I can't.

I don't know whether it's because I'm a jaded Gooner, after all I've seen Arsenal win the FA Cup 4 times in the last decade, or whether it's the knowledge the the FA Cup is pretty much the consolation prize of English football these days.

But the "magic of the cup" doesn't work like it used to eh?

I've published my preview for the game on the main site and it's not looking too rosy for the Arse as they'll have to do without both Fabregas Cesc and Robin Van Persie who are both suspended for this game.

Adebayor is also out (he should be back for Blackburn in the league next week), while neither Theo Walcott nor William Gallas will make this trip - but they might go on Tuesday for the Carling Cup.

Liverpool look strong at Anfield this season (9-2-0 23:3 in the league) and I don't think that they've lost at home since Benfica beat them their 2-0 last season to knock Liverpool out of the Champions League.

Mind you we do have Thierry Henry back and Gilberto will hold the fort in midfield too - in fact when you look at the Arsenal side making the trip I suspect that 59 or 60 of the other 64 teams still in the competition would happily make a mass player exchange - so we've got a talented (if raw) side.
:-)

So - where there is Henry there is Hope - although I suspect that Gooners will be better off betting on Henry scoring ANYTIME rather than the Arse getting a result.

Hopefully I'm wrong and you can all post "told ya so" comments on Saturday night eh?

Good luck all.

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