Arsenal must repeat last year’s Wembley heroics to beat Man City

Arsenal booked their place in the final of the League Cup last night with a win over Chelsea, and are now booked in to play Manchester City at Wembley next month.

The Citizens have been immensely impressive this season, going on an absurd record-setting run of wins, and look to have all-but wrapped up the Premier League title at this early point in the term.

This isn’t too dissimilar to last season’s FA Cup final, when Arsenal had to overcome the already-crowned Premier League champions Chelsea after they ran away with the title after an impressive winning run also, and to lift this trophy we will no doubt have to overcome the odds once more.

We are not one to shy away from a challenge, and have enjoyed success at Wembley in recent seasons, including three FA Cup wins in the last four years, and Granit Xhaka insists we will not be going into this game without belief in coming away victorious.

Xhaka said: “I think if you play a final you want to win the trophy, so we go to the game against City and think we can win this game.”

He also stated that he knows that his side were second-best in the opening exchanges of the first-half against the Blues yesterday, but his side were able to adapt the system to get back into the game, before adding his elation with his contribution during the game.

“I think we knew we didn’t play well in the first half and we changed the system in the second half and you can see in the second half we were the better team,” he added.

I think it was my second goal for Arsenal inside the box. I am happy, I helped the team and we are happy, we go to Wembley now.”

Can we be confident going into the final with Man City considering our recent success at Wembley?

Pat J

Tags Arsenal Chelsea Man City Xhaka

20 Comments

  1. I think Manchester City could be too occupied with the major tournaments, instead of focusing on the League Cup. Arsenal would miss the tenacity of Sanchez, but I hope Mkhitaryan would be more clicked with his new teammates by then.

    If Arsenal want to secure the Europa League and the League Cup tournaments, they have to acquire Aubameyang as soon as possible, to weaken Dortmund and to strengthen their front side with Aubameyang’s height and pace. Lacazette is good, but he struggles with Wenger’s tactics and he could play better behind a taller striker like Aubameyang or Giroud.

      1. That’s too bad. It means Arsenal would have to rely on higher work rate from Lacazette, Iwobi, Welbeck, Ozil, Wilshere and Xhaka. Arsenal cannot let Manchester City build their attack from the back and it could only be achieved by constantly pressurizing their defense.

  2. Absolutely not. We should not be confident at all. City is a top team innit and will be tough to beat. I wish we could use Mkhi but he’s cup tied. Hopefully we will get another top player(s) who aren’t cup tied.
    It be nice to win the Carabao Cup but we need to focus on Europa League.

    Mahrez was at the Emirates tonight btw
    Maybe just watching a semi final

    1. Mahrez is desperate to leave but no one is keen on him as hes over priced…

      On the final day of the transfer window, he has to fly himself to London and cut himself a deal to move…Unfortunately, it failed!!

  3. It will be an extremely tough game, but we seem to excel in these one off cup games. Even though City have other comps to worry about they have still been fielding strong teams. What worries me more are the Wenger comments that he’s happy with the squad that we have got and that he still believes they are strong enough with or without signings.

    1. Pep will want to win everything on offer. This is the first trophy of season so I’d expect city to play their strongest side. We are decent at the cup games so hopefully this will put us in good stead for Europa or when we manage to make CL again. We don’t go all gung ho in the cup games, that would be the most noticeable difference, and we get a good rub of the green would be the next noticeable difference.

  4. The League cup is and has
    always been a “B” grade competition.
    Premier league teams should
    leave the League cup for
    lower divisions to compete for.
    I think the Europa league is pointless too
    playing mostly tin pot teams from nobody European leagues.
    The top 4 should play in the Champions league as it is now.
    The 16 remaining PL sides should play in 4 groups of four
    home and away exactly like the ECL teams do.
    So there is a minimum of 6 games per team
    whereas now 1 or 2 is the norm in the league cup.
    Much less travel and a much higher level of play would be achieved
    with many more teams sharing in the benefits of more games.

    1. Radaradarada ” a no body” calling other leagues no body league….with opinions are how big Brand teams should play….what an irony of life…Tin cup yet the big four will all be happy to win it.

  5. Logic means don’t be too kamikaze on the attack. Make sure the danger guys are well looked after and not be given time and space to shoot.Take a leaf fron Swans. They block the highway and the speedy Gonzales Pool strikers ran into aroad block. This is how anti football works.
    However the fm is notorious for all out attack and leave gaps and that’s why he lost by buckets of goals against the top teams.
    If he ain t careful MC will run roughshod over him and the Belgian will hit ahattrick.

  6. @ Barry, I would rather have the cabbage cup than have a mini based cup between the 16 other teams in the league, would the knock out rounds be a 2 leg affair, I see the so called B comp as a comp we can bed our youngsters in and give your reserves some game time, hopefully so they can push themselves in to the managers plan. Also these so called lesser teams get the chance to play against the big teams and as a lot of them aren’t financially sound the revenue they get goes a long way in helping the club. Also don’t you just love an upset.

  7. Trying to imagine what Auba would look like with Laca Mkhit and Ozil, I kept imaging two playmakers behind two top strikers as well as the odd midfielder. Really hope the deal goes through, it might not be the most balanced looking forward line but to have another playmaker besides Ozil and another speedy finisher besides Lacazette you’d have to be pleased. They’d be a difficult bunch to get to grips with, so I hope it’s not just a case of two arriving for the two that will
    finally leave.

      1. Wenger is just bitter that with gazidis, sven and soon raul managing the club he is no longer essential thus can be only judged by football results like any coach should be. He either fix the mess we are in or gets sacked.
        Best years of wenger was when he was just a coach(one of the best) with dein in charge of management. since dein left wenger has been grabbing all the power hence our fall from the top to the bottom of the top 6. David Dein was the fergie of football business, he was strong, powerful and scared people. He didnt take shit from anyone, wenger would choose a player and dein would get him at any cost or means necessary.
        Go go gazidis uprising

        1. I think Wenger has shown to be bitter towards Gazidis already before these changes.
          DoF comment? In 2007 AFC was talking about hiring a DoF and Gazidis was appointed. People claim it is Wenger scared of losing power but I will point to how Wenger claimed he knew of all the talent regarding Mavrop signing. Wenger makes snide comments and he has done for years. Sometimes valid, sometimes not.

          I don’t blame a bit of bitterness, not saying I want it to stay the same 😛
          I can understand why a manager would be bitter if they asked for Lacazette and was given Perez…

          Not the 1st time Gazidis done that to Wenger either, ElNeny when Wenger had already spoken to Xhaka?

          Gazidis isn’t a scout so what was he doing making signings that the manager didn’t want? All it done is waste AFC money and give us a worse rep in the transfer window, which Wenger gets all the blame for.

          I feel Wenger has been treated harshly, the current squad isn’t made up of Wenger picks like it would have been if Dein was leading us still, it had deadwood from Gazidis signings which we are having difficulty in selling and as such wages still on the books.

          Wenger said he only wanted Welbroke on loan but Gazidis made it a purchase, Wenger said this in an interview as well which I was linking on this site at the time, still got him and down to 18 months left on his contract… Contracts, another area people have blamed Wenger.

          Is it a coincidence that AFC have allowed contracts for sponsorship deals to run down and now longer with us?

          We all know Dein done the contracts when he was with AFC, Cashley confirms this as the reason why he left us after Dein offered him a low wage to resign. Wenger may have had a concept of how wages should be done but it was Dein who done it.
          Gazidis was hired to replace Dein… Dein done transfers and contracts.

          I am looking forward to Wenger retiring now, now that Gazidis is getting people in who know about football and not just anyone, some top people which is… maximum credit to Gazidis on this part.

          I just didn’t want Gazidis to mess the next manager around like Wenger has been in the transfer market and player contracts, now we are getting top people in for those areas… Now look for a tactical genius who can also develop stars internally. They will have a springboard to start on now.

    1. Really?? Coz we have Giroud? The donkey? PEA is a total striker and we would have been more dangerous with him in our attack. Hope the guys who went to Germany won’t listen to this old fa*t and just buy the guy for us fans, not for deluded people like Wenger

  8. Good win even tho we were not great. Koscielny needs to be replaced in the summer. He got done badly 2or3 times last night. Hes 32 and hes had his injuries. We need a good CB who knows how to organise things. He doesnt need to be able to play, just defend and organise. I also thing Xhaka needs to go. Hes been very disappointing since he came. Yes he got a goal but he gives away the ball an awful lot. We can beat City but we will need to bring our A game and hope for a bit of luck too.

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