Cheers.

And I've always praised Hughes for his work up at Blackburn. I've always admired the guy for his talents in the game and his attitude. And he did get it right, even if it was really dangerous. But they got through it, we fired some blanks up front, an injury plague + silly suspensions wiped out a full first eleven but we struggled nevertheless. And Samba was cracker tonight, as was Friedel again.

I'm hugely annoyed. But not angry at the results, angry at Arsenal & Wenger in particular.

And we have got a young team, but inexperience wasn't our problem tonight. Youth wasn't our problem tonight. Wenger got it wrong, Hughes got it right and we struggled to beat them with what we had.

But Wenger putting Senderos at Right Back was a nightmare decision, almost as if he wanted Blackburn to go through.

I could have swore his name was Justin!

You should be stripped of member of the month already!



What a goal by McCarthy!!!

Nice try. But it is Gavin, and he's Justin's younger brother. Another English Arsenal Youth product.

McCarthy's goal is being overrated in my opinion. Yes, he placed it well but I could have skint Senderos & found the net with all that time & space.

Senderos has also clearly been a member at the David Pleat Soccer Skillz school.

Yeah Senderos Senderos Senderos, that's all I keep hearing tonight, like it was all his fault! Listen J-Axe, if you want to blame anyone, blame your strikers. How many chances do you want to win a match??!! Senderos makes one mistake; how many did Baptista make?! Your boys played beautiful football, but yet again it comes to nothing. I hope you are feeling angry, mate. Angry like "Cesc" after the 1st leg

As for the penalty claims; the first one wasn't as Aliadiere could have kept his feet but the ball ran away, hence his theatrical dive. The second was a free kick, right outside the box, where the initial leg to leg contact occured.

Arsenal's season is collapsing big time. PSV already have a 1-0 lead in the Champions' League. The league is already over, and I'm loving it

That's cool. You should be loving it, Arsenal don't often get kicked out of the F.A Cup this early to such a weaker team.

But you complain about me for criticising thee donkey? Senderos' key mistake cost us the game. And I'm not criticising Senderos for that one mistake, I'm criticising him for every mistake he makes in the Arsenal shirt. Something he does on a regular basis, which winds me up. Especially when Djourou has been brilliant when playing! OK, Johan was injured tonight but there were other options.

I'm not angry. I was angry in the 1st leg, because of Blackburn's tactics. I explained that in the 'Cesc yaps at Hughes' thread.

The penalty claim in the 1st leg, was a penalty. Aliadière was chopped down by Warnock. In the game tonight, Freddie was clipped on the left ankle just outside the box, but Emerton's arm was in Freddie's face inside the box when he fell. Ljungberg was through had he not of brought him down and Freddie went down inside the box. I've seen those been given as a penalty and Andy Gray was certainly sure that it was one. The Official even said that he was looking at the upper body of the two players, therefore missed the contact for the "penalty". So it was touch and go, I realise the initial contact was outside the box, but he went down in the box whilst Emerton was still making foul contact.

What does all that matter anyway? We're out. But the Refereeing was quite poor - which is a regular feature in most games in the Premiership this season.

Our season has collapsed. We've threw away the chance of winning two trophies in the space of a few days - although I wasn't so bothered about not winning the Carling Cup, as a Gooner I've come to learn that the Carling Cup is a testing field for our rookies or youngsters.

We are out of the title race and I honestly can't see us going through against PSV. They have a solid Defence and if they take up similar tactics to how they played the first leg, they will hold us back and with Koné, Farfan & Mendez they're always a huge threat on the counter-attack. I believe Wenger was tactically beaten by Koeman in the first leg encounter also.

A problem with Arsenal at the moment is that players are being rotated too much for my liking. Fair enough, for different competitions have different priorities, but when Hleb plays one, misses the next one, plays one, misses next two - you lose momentum, form sizzles and your mentality is like the Belfast weather forecast. And Hleb is a hugely important player for us - he's just one example.

Tonight we had twelve First teamers out as well. So our makeshift team tonight were struggling to bond - you could see Hleb was out of sorts. Eboué was nowhere & his link-up play with the Midfield was awful, Denílson was tripping over Gilberto and Senderos was all over the shop - I was surprised Gallas coped so well with that donkey giving him a tougher job to do.

But you're telling me who to blame? I blame Wenger and the two teams who played in both legs. Not just Senderos, even if his mistake was key to the loss. I've already criticised Baptista for being too greedy. He's always trying to make the game his personal wondershow, where everyone else in the team has to hang about whilst he takes control, in order to impress Le Boss so that he gets into the First team - then complacency gets the better of him and his performances are always hot & cold. I'm not a big fan of The Beast, but at least he has digs at goal. Tonight he hit some crackers, but Friedel pulled off some top notch saves. As for the young Frenchman - Aliadière chased everything, he worked hard & when on the ball he always made use of it. He only got one sight of goal and hit the target. I'm not biased because I've backed him up before, I'm just giving a fair opinion on his performance tonight. The support he got & the service he got was terrible, simply because the missing link in Midfield left the two Strikers stranded. Baptista often came into Midfield to carry the ball whilst Aliadière looked wide to get some possession.

And you have to give credit to Blackburn, who defended really well again. Samba deserved his Man of the Match award! He was a giant, shrugging The Beast off the ball easily & making Freddie look like a struggling schoolboy. Warnock worked really hard & Emerton was always hassling, but for me lucky to stay on the pitch with his constant hacking & fouling.

Mokoena really worked hard & Tugay especially. OK, at times outsmarted by the tricky Gooners, lured into hacking them down - but they worked hard and Tugay was also lucky to stay on the pitch, hence taking him off when he recieved his lately produced yellow.

So, I'm not going to blame our attacking players in this game. Because I felt the service was poor, I felt the key areas in our attacking play were weakened and those who stepped in didn't half do the job. I mean, Denílson has made a great impact in his first season but he was all over the place tonight. Maybe it's a good sign for us that he's very similar to Gilberto in terms of positional play & his defensive abilities, but he really clashed with the Captain tonight. That's why Wenger moved Gilberto into Centre Back and brought Hleb into the middle. To try & balance the Midfield better and help our attacks generate better.

Freddie was a livewire and it's good to see him back, troubling Defenders, getting stuck in and making those trademark runs that splits Defences in two. It's just a pity he fluffed his one real chance to score. But again, that great chance that he had in the first half was the first time Denílson played a threaded ball to a man in front of him!

All in all, a magical win for Hughes & his Club and they deserved it - negative tactics or not.

By your standards, that's a poor post, in my opinion, J.

You say the key mistake lied with Senderos, but his mistake was in the last 5 minutes, but that's harsh, his was the LAST mistake...what about all those missed chances beforehand??!! Isn't Baptista's header a key mistake? Ljungberg's mis-control? All those other chances?

Also, you say you were denied "two clear penalties", yet in a previous post, you say one was touch and go!

One last point; what in your opinion is Arsenal's first team? HOW CAN YOU HAVE 12 FIRST TEAMERS OUT??!!!

I probably could have picked up on more, but I'm plssed!

Because a First team involves more than twelve players.

There's a First team, those boys who are picked for the match - OK?
Then there's a Reserve team, those boys who aren't picked for the matches but are there for back-up & they play against other Reserves teams, in order to impress & make the First team.

However, a starting Eleven or first Eleven would consist of only Eleven.

Freddie made mistakes, Baptista made mistakes and so did most of the players. But I feel Senderos' mistake & Wenger's mistake in putting him there was key to Blackburn's goal, which won the game.

Of course, if Freddie had of scored - but that's an if. Of course Baptista could have improved his shooting in front of goal - but that's a could have. The fact is, Senderos made a mistake & Blackburn capitalised, hence we lost the game.

All I said was that Senderos' mistake was key to Blackburn scoring & winning. I didn't say it was the only mistake.

And there was one clear penalty that wasn't given. I had a look over at the Freddie penalty claim again after my original post & realised that the contact was outside the box despite him going down inside the box. Still, touch & go even if Andy Gray is "astonished" at why it wasn't given. So you can forgive me surely? I read it wrong first time around, thinking it was a clear foul inside the box - even Andy Gray was fooled by his first impression.

And thanks for the "poor post" comment. But I really think it makes a lot of sense, but we will have to agree to disagree per usual.

Arsenal's problem is that they have so many gifted footballers that they want to score perfect goals. Perhaps they need to work on sacrificing some of this "beautiful" football and knock some bloody goals in already. It's really hard for me to comprehend why such a great team (on paper) cant put the ball in???

Maybe Arsenal need to pick up an out and out striker in the summer... A "Dirk Kuyt" type player that just attacks the goal with everything he's got. I know they got Henry and he's great, although i think he's overrated, he certainly needs backup...

Er.. is the best young Dutch Striker that we currently own not good enough?

Damn it, last night I was looking at the probable starting lineups and decided to put a bet on Blackburn to win in 90 minutes, well internet betting was closed for the night on my crappy New Zealand betting site.

How anyone can blame Wenger for our loss is absolutely ridiculous !!

If our attackers had finished their dinner with all their chances in both the first match and the replay (Not first or second leg by the way) then we would have destroyed Blackburn.

The point is that Arsenal did'nt take their chances........AGAIN!!! Hughes got their boys defending well and well done but he didn't get his team out playing Arsenal on both games. They had no choice but to defend because there's no way of attacking Arsenal to win the game.

Again we gave them the chance to win the game not Hughes’s management skills!!?? That's a stupid thing to say.

The bottom line is we lost because of our strikers with poor ref decisions thrown in again! And by the way they were both penalties. First one clear cut don't even need to explain and the second, their was contact made on Freddie from outside the box and following inside the box so yes a clear cut penalty. Not going to harp on about that though.

Senderos is sh!t but Wenger had no choice but to play him. The amount of players we had out was a joke. Any team with that amount of first team players out wouldn't have coped as well.

Wenger I think needs to start thinking of ways to improve our finishing because it is costing us big time. This is why Van the man and Henry are so important because they are great at finishing.

He has also learned that playing first team players in the Carling Cup has cost us because you can't rely on linesman.....Especially when they send our strikers off for hitting Lampard??? hhhmmmm

I hope that was Barcelona enough for the young cesc.

Neither of the peno claims were pens in my opinion, the 1st one aliadier left his trailing foot out and made himself trip over brad.

The second one, contact outside the box, and he fell in the box no pen.

Again was really impressed with Denilson £3.4m well spent there, and again I can’t see how aliadrie has a future at Arsenal, but that’s another topic.

Overall if you don’t finish your chance you will invariably loose.

Great tactic by Hughes to defend at the Emirates, and then play on the counter at home and a master stroke to bring on Benni McCarthy. I was also Impressed with the one man wall which is Samba I think he is around 7 foot

and Thierry Henry `overated` .....please dont make me laugh ...

..Really there should'nt of even been a replay. The first game we should have had a penalty let alone the other two last night (in my opinion)

Same old story against Arsenal.

Oh well....PSV next.

i guess Sparky Hughes was completly right in his tactics over both legs now! well done Blackburn for playing to your strengths, hanging on and taking your chances!

TO be fair if Arsenal had a striker (not including Henry) that could finish then it would have been all over way before the first half ended. Its the same old thing with Liverpool and i know how frustrating it is, so can sympathise with the Arsenal fans on that! Even though he scored so many against us, i have never thought Baptista is good enough striker for Arsenal. Another Enile Heskey perhaps?

I dont think either penalty 'claims' were penalities, for me Ameer summed those two inncidents up well.

Great goal by Benni, and well done to Blackburn!

P.S - J-Axe - you might remember me criticising Adebayor alot, well, i am slowly coming around to him, slowly i might add looks like good develop into a very good player, but time will tell ay

"against Arsenal" lol

well on Baptista ..i will give him until his loan period is over ....6 goals in 2 or 3 games in the Carling Cup looks good on paper but then you look at his season overall ...6 goals in 18 games ..and it does not look so good ...still Wenger seems to have made his mind up about him ...i think he will keep him . Interesting to know if Real Madrid will keep Reyes after the loan period ...

brilliant post yet again

you never fail to make me laugh

[quote="Steely Hill"]



Gee thanks.........dee you mean that or are you being silly? oh....stop it will ya...



Sigh.......I try....dunno why but I try............