After last night’s opening Champions League games, all the talk on Arsenal websites is about our meeting with Barcelona next Tuesday, but first of all we have the small matter of a fifth round FA Cup tie against Hull City coming up.
As this game is only three days before the Barca clash, everyone is expecting Arsene Wenger to make many changes to his first team to keep our stars fresh for the Spanish giants, but that may end up being a false economy.
Wenger made a few changes before the last round tie against Burnley and we only ended up with a narrow 2-1 win with many scares before the end, and if we again play a weakened team we can expect an even tougher fight from the Tigers.
Hull may be a Championship side but they already have one foot back in the Premiership as they are leading the table. They have only lost one of their last ten games and that was a narrow 1-0 defeat at fourth placed Burnley.
No Gooner can forget the trouble we had beating Hull in the Final two years ago when we nicked the trophy in extra time after having to come back from 2-0 down, and the following season they held us to a 2-2 draw at the Emirates. We can take heart that we have not actually lost to the Tigers in 10 games since 2008 when they won 2-1 in their first ever Premier League game at the Emirates, but right now they are in confident mood and on a great run, so we must not expect them to roll over, especially if we play some reserves….