Arsenal’s brilliant new signing Petr Cech already has four FA Cup Winners medals from his time at Chelsea, and he has made it clear that he considers it to be an important trophy to him. “I always say it is a special competition,” he said on Arsenal.com. “I always love to play in FA Cup games because first you start with the fact you can play teams in lower divisions.
“The atmosphere and everything surrounding the game [underlines] the fact that this could be history for the club you play against. Even if you play a club in the Premier League, the elements of the away fans changes for FA Cup games.
“The away team has a much bigger support than all the other games and the atmosphere is lifted. If you take the history of the cup – it is the oldest competition in the world and that is special in itself.
“I always love to play the FA Cup no matter the team we play because it is always special to be involved,” he continued. “The second reason is if you play in the final or semi final you get to play at Wembley Stadium.
“You always play big games there. This means once you go to the game you have this pressure, tension and atmosphere, so they are always the games you look forward to playing in and that is why the FA Cup is special for me.”
Cech certainly has the experience to make a difference in a Cup Final, so it will be very interesting to see if Arsene Wenger even picks Petr to play his weekend as Le Prof has traditionally played his substitute keeper in all the cup games. But David Ospina has only played in three games this season, losing badly against Zagreb and Olympiakos and only winning against Tottenham. Luckily an “injury” kept the Colombian out of the remaining Champions League matches and we managed to scrape through, and there has been rumours of grumbling from our backup keeper with whispers that he wants to leave the club for first team football.
So do you think that Wenger wll now give Ospina another chance to redeem himself in the FA Cup, or will he decide to stick with our charismatic Number 33?