It was strange thinking about Arsenal playing on a Friday night, it's happened in the past but not very often. However when you look at the stats maybe we should play on Fridays more often. Anyway we beat Coventry fairly comfortably and our reward for that is a 5th round tie at home against Liverpool. Looking at the rest of the teams in the cup we could feel hard done by but that's the cup and with City taking on Chelsea in the same round the winner of our tie will certainly fancy their chances.
Tomorrow gives us a chance to extend our lead at the top of the table, for a day albeit, against a Southampton side who have been a bit of a surprise package in this league and I think Pochetino has done fantastically well. It will be a hard game for us but then every match in this league is hard, Southampton have pace and power and they use them well when they click. They made it hard for us earlier in the season until their goalkeeper decided to show Ronaldo how it's done and gifted Giroud the opener.
Playing before your rivals or playing after when you're top really makes no difference the simple fact is if you win, you will remain top. We can't go into it hoping that other teams drop points, we go in knowing a win will do the job. Looking around I can't see our North London Rivals taking anything from City, baring a miracle and baring a miracle of biblical proportions I can't see West Ham taking anything from Chelsea either so we treat it as we do every other week.
Following this game we have Crystal Palace then we hit the start of a truly horrific run of fixtures which reads: Liverpool, Man United, Liverpool, Bayern Munich. And that's just the prelude to the quite ludicrous run we have in March but I'll rant about that nearer the time.
In other news there's good news that Ramsey, Vermaelen and Arteta are all back from injury and are available for the game although Wilshere is a doubt for the match. According to all the right people we are still working on contract talks with Bacary Sagna who I think deserves exactly what he's asking for, he's been a servant for the club and this will be his last big contract and I'd love for it to be wit us. He's a fan favourite and the best right back in the league.
Transfer news is slow around us in this window, like most windows to be honest. We shelled out a fortune on Ozil and I really can't see us repeating that despite our obvious need for a striker. I think there is concrete interest in Draxler but firstly I'm not sure he's what we need to kick our season on and secondly I think a January move is far more likely for the young German.
So we take on Southampton tomorrow night and let's hope that we can do the business to keep our title surge going. COYG.
