Reading set to face Arsenal in FA Cup – but they are NOT celebrating!

As much as Arsenal fans were hoping to get some revenge on Bradford in the FA Cup semi-final, we can’t really complain about having to face Championship strugglers Reading at Wembley instead. The Royals are currently 17th in England’s second tier but are only 10 points clear of the relegation zone.

The Reading boss Steve Clarke doesn’t think that that gap is yet big enough for his team to relax ahead of the FA Cup semi-final in a month’s time: “It’s a long time since we’ve been in the semi-finals as a club, but before that we’ve got some important games in the league. We need to get some points.” he said on the BBC.

“It’s another big pay-day for a club that’s been struggling financially for a couple of years, and it’s a nice thing for the new owners who’ve just come in.

“Everyone connected with the club thought we’d be challenging to return to the Premier League. That’s not happened for whatever reason and we’ll hopefully be more competitive next season.

“The players are delighted but I don’t know if there’ll be too many celebrations at this stage.”

Reading have actually done really well to get this far, having been drawn away in every single round so far, with wins against fellow Championship sides Huddersfield, Cardiff and Derby before getting Bradford in the Quarters. I don’t Arsenal will be unduly worried about this at the moment as they have MUCH bigger fish to fry in the intervening four weeks!

Tags Bradford Reading

13 Comments

  1. I’m too focused on Monaco to be honest

    However, when we do play them we must not underestimate them and MUST put out our best team.

    We need to play Reading like they are Chelski.
    In other words play our best players and play hard.

    1. All the Arsenal fans I know are demanding a full attacking side with a front 4 of Giroud, Alexis, Cazorla and Ozil. That is absolutely suicidal. I mean, don’t we learn from our mistakes. Our water weight midfield was the reason we lost at home in the first leg. And we can’t keep on giving players second chances. Mertesacker was horrible and should be replaced by Gabriel if fit. Ozil and Cazorla can’t both start and Ramsey has to play if we are to stand a chance against Kondogbia and Moutinho. Ozil should be sacrificed. Monreal has been performing superbly lately but for this match we need Gibbs’ pace.

      Ospina
      Bellerin Gabriel Koscielny Gibbs
      Coquelin Ramsey
      Welbeck Cazorla Sanchez

      1. Credit to them, they have been away in each of those ties and even pl clubs would have had difficulties in those ties. Looking forward to a great game and any reading fans trolling right now i say congratulations yous have earned it but i wont wish yous good luck for the obvious reason… enjoy the spectacle.

  2. We will give them a reading LESSON!!!!

    Monoco 0-4 ARSENAL!!! I have the good feelings after eating West Ham Sandwiches!!!!

  3. The key to beating Reading is scoring more goals than they do, if we can do that I think we’ll get through.

  4. we will win the fa, ucl and even epl 🙂 🙂 🙂
    just wait and see it happen pals, we are beating monaco, overtaking man city and chelsea and making wembley a fortress 🙂 🙂 🙂

    well, who am I kidding 🙁 , ucl is long gone, todays game is just a ‘practice session’ 🙁 🙁 epl is only mathematicaly posible but practicaly impossible 🙁 🙁 🙁

  5. If we don’t win tonight then we won’t be a top 8 (pot 1) team in the CL anymore. We haven’t been great over the past 5 years but nonetheless UEFA’s rankings are ridiculous. How can teams like Porto, Benfica and Schalke get higher scores than us?

    Because they’ve done well in the Europa league, an inferior league that we’ve been too good to play in. Any team that qualifies for the last 16 of the CL should automatically get a higher score than any team that finishes third in the CL group stages and goes into the Europa League, regardless of how well they do in the EL. Fact is they finished below the CL knockout teams in the group stages, so they can’t be as good.

    I hate UEFA’s rankings. A little bugbear of mine. Apparently they’ve been reformed for next season anyway so that the top 8 teams are the title winners from the top 8 leagues rather than the pot 1 teams, so it doesn’t matter that we’ve dropped out anyways. On the bright side, that means there’ll be 3 easy groups next year. As long as we avoid the Spanish, German, Italian and French champions we’ll be home and dry to the last 16. I wouldn’t mind the French/Italians either though if I’m honest. But that leaves the Russian, Ukrainian and Portuguese Champions. Wouldn’t mind that draw every year, though I’d rather we had our own group as English Champions.

      1. @mick, yeh its a joke, i mean they put all that importance of Portuguese winner and other winners ie Dutch or whoever by basically putting there league at the same level with top three/four.. yet Celtic win their league and they must play qualifiers.

        My point is they can see in Scotlands and other cases that the league is weak so shouldnt be judged alike/aside others, but yet they are not consistent throughout.

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