Well that was a close one wasn’t it!! by Shenel
So Arsenal get lucky and leave it late to beat a Newcastle side that could have even nicked it away from us!
A good starting 11 soon became an unfortunate one when Martinelli got injured in the warm up and had to be replaced by Nelson, who really failed to shine, as did Willock. But it was a tense game and you could actually feel the tension despite not being in the stadium!
Chances for both sides failed to test either keeper but just before full time Leno kept us in the game and heading for extra time, when he pulled off key saves to deny a last minute winner for Newcastle.
Into extra time we went and despite ending the first half of extra time 0-0 you could see it was only going to be matter of time for us to win. On came Lacazette who should have been on from the start in my opinion and his arrival alongside Emile Smith-Rowe meant the two combined and Lacazette set up Emile for the first goal of the night coming in the fourth minute of the second half of extra time, once again showing Arteta that they should be starting and not on the bench!
But the goals didn’t end there and just a few minutes before the end of the game Tierney crossed in for an Aubameyang tap in to make it 2-0 to Arsenal in a rather unconvincing win for the majority of the game, to take us through to the next round of the cup that we are the current record holders!
It wasn’t an amazing performance by our standards and if Arteta’s eyesight is as good as he makes out then there will be some players that hopefully we won’t be seeing in an Arsenal shirt for a very long time, to mention no names.
More importantly though my thoughts go to Gabriel Martinelli, who was spotted sitting watching the game, after becoming injured in the warm up. I hope it is not a serious injury and that he was pulled out for a mere precaution and will be back sooner rather than later, because we did miss him there is no doubt about that!
All in all despite the struggle, we kept a clean sheet thanks to Leno and we go on to the next round of the FA Cup, but in these times if we want to keep hold of the cup for a record 15th time then there is no doubt we will have to play much better than we did and win the game within 90 minutes.
Gooners?
Shenel Osman