Decent performance from Arsenal, but they made it a little more difficult for themselves than it could’ve been. Their dominance was such that a 2-0 victory was a tad disappointing in some respects, but a win’s a win’s a win. Sanchez, even though he really shouldn’t have been playing, was quite excellent throughout, and his goal was superb.
Full-time: Arsenal 2-0 Hull
And that’s yer lot.
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90 mins +2: Elmohamady loops a cross over from deep on the right which Hernandez gets his head to, but he was too far out and too far to the right of goal to actually threaten it. Goal-kick.
90 mins + 1: Three minutes of stoppage time, and a final change for Arsenal, as Ainsley Maitland-Niles comes on for Campbell.
90 mins: Close for Hull. A long ball isn’t really cleared by Mertesacker properly, it falls to Ince who controls then hits a right-footed half-volley that skims the outside of the post.
89 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain is down receiving treatment - not sure exactly why, could be the residual effects of that foul by Davies on his knee.
87 mins: Brainless stuff from Coquelin, jumping off the floor and diving in with both feet on Maguire. Could easily have been a red, but he didn’t catch the Hull man with anything like the force he might have, and is lucky to get away with a yellow. Would’ve been perhaps the most pointless red of the year.
85 mins: Odd one from JR in Illinois: ‘A couple minutes ago in response to Hernandez blazing a shot over the bar in a poor attempt from a dumb angle Efan Ekoku told me “That’s what the FA Cup is all about.” Can you help me understand this?’ Nope, I got nothin’.
Meanwhile, Davies goes into the book for a cynical trip on Oxlade-Chamberlain, who was making serious tracks towards goal on the right corner of the box.
84 mins: And that’s Sanchez done for the day - Chuba Akpom replaces him.
82 mins: Cazorla picks the ball up around 25 yards out, shapes to shoot but instead chooses to slip it to Sanchez with his back to goal on the edge of the D. He controls, drops a shoulder and spins to the right in one motion, before curling a perfect shot into the bottom corner. Quite brilliant.
GOAL! Arsenal 2-0 Hull (Sanchez 82)
Absolutely superb stuff from Arsenal.
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79 mins: At the other end Hernandez gets some space out on the left and has a chance to tee a colleague in the middle up, but instead he tries a shot from an impossible angle, and it goes high and wide.
78 mins: Brilliant work from Oxlade-Chamberlain to gather the ball in a crowd of players, take it from his own feet and into some space, and then feed Sanchez. The Chilean gets it to the byline and fires into the danger zone, but it’s too hard for anyone to do anything with, and it’s eventually cleared.
76 mins: That’s Walcott done - Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain comes on instead. OK performance from the England winger, but he looked understandably rusty.
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75 mins: Sanchez then goes into the book for a late challenge on Davies. Well, sort of late - a millisecond late, really, but he did catch him on the top of his foot, which would’ve stung.
74 mins: Another chance for Arsenal - Sanchez gathers a loose ball and lines up a shooting chance, but kicks it with his standing foot, taking it from his control and he can only clip a weak shot at Harper.
73 mins: Couple of chances for Arsenal - firstly Bellerin shoots from outside the area but it goes high and wide, before another attack is built and Walcott looks to be in behind the defence, but he can’t quite gather the through-ball.
72 mins: Nearly a moment of high comedy in the Arsenal defence. Some neat work involving Ince sets up a crossing chance from the right, which Mertesacker swings his boot at it, and it curls high in the air but luckily for him, into Ospina’s arms.
69 mins: First Hull sniff for a little while - Elmohamady gets down the right and puts over a cross, but Bellerin does well to clear before Hernandez to get there. A single fan sings ‘Arsenal we love you.’ Poignant.
68 mins: Sub for Hull - Abel Hernandez is on for Sagbo.
67 mins: Arsenal go close again, as Cazorla slides the ball through the middle where Walcott is, and he flicks the ball over Harper with the outside of his right foot...but it trickles just wide.
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66 mins: Belting challenge by Maguire to potentially save a goal. The ball pinballs around in the box and falls in front of Sanchez, who shapes to hammer the thing into the net but the former Sheffield United defender is there to get everything in the way, and block both ball and man. Excellent defending.
65 mins: Mikel Arteta is sat behind the bench with what looks like an Arsenal towel around his knees. Nothing else much is happening. Sorry.
62 mins: Change for Hull - Ahmed Elmohamady comes on for Sone Aluko. Looks like Tom Ince will move inside with the Egyptian out on the right.
61 mins: Great chance for Campbell. Cazorla brings the ball down well and flips to Sanchez, who tries to return the ball but it goes behind the Spaniard. However, it falls directly into the path of Campbell, who winds up for a shot from just outside the area but pulls it, the ball dribbling rather sadly wide.
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60 mins: All got a bit scrappy here. Neither team are passing the thing particularly well, few chances being created. Sanchez tries a long pass from left to right for Walcott, but it’s far too deep.
58 mins: Hull win a free-kick way out on the right, which Brady loops high, high and high again, over the bar. Bruce shakes his head and looks to the floor, like a man who’s just dropped Junior’s college fund on the craps tables at the Tangiers.
56 mins: Lots of sideways passing at the moment. Lots.
54 mins: Oh man. Brady tries a shot from around 25 yards out that...well...oh man. Higher than Afroman.
51 mins: Chance for Arsenal as Rosicky picks it up and runs from deep, skipping through the Hull midfield but he tries to beat one man too many as he tries to create a shooting opportunity. No dice there.
On cue, here’s Daniel Finucane: ‘Really glad to see Rosicky back, as he is a pleasure to watch. There is an argument that, even with the arrivals of Ozil and Sanchez, he is Arsenal’s most “world-class” player, at least in terms of technical skill and footballing genius. He is Cazorla with pace and directness, Hleb with shooting ability, Ozil with graft. And he does what mysteriously only a few players do: stop on a dime and switch the play. Works every time! Why don’t more players do that?’
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50 mins: Ach, nasty collisions between Sanchez and Quinn - the Hull man nipped the ball away from Sanchez just ask he was taking a massive swing at it, so instead of kicking the ball he toe-punts Quinn’s Achilles. No fun for anyone, free-kick to Hull.
48 mins: First chance of the half for Arsenal. Some space opens up in the Hull midfield and Sanchez picks it up, drives towards goal, skips around Davies and shoots, but there’s no great power on it and Harper saves with ease.
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46 mins: And we’re away. No changes for either side, Hull still setting up in a 4-4-2.
The teams, they are emerging.
Half-time: Arsenal 1-0 Hull
Decent half of football, and while Arsenal have been much the better side they should probably be more than 1-0 up. At least they haven’t let in one of the goals that somehow feel inevitable when a team have dominated like this without scoring a representative number of goals.
45 mins: McShane then goes into the book for a high foot near the byline on the Hull right, catching Monreal high up on his hip. Sanchez makes a complete balls of the free-kick, though, trying a low pass into the middle that’s easily cleared.
44 mins: Aluko is caught by Coquelin, and no free-kick is given, rather surprisingly. Sanchez then gets chopped by McShane, and the whistle does go.
42 mins: Heat maps usually look like bacteria magnified on petri dishes, don’t they?
.@19SCazorla's heatmap so far in #AFCvHCFC. What have you made of the Spaniard's display? pic.twitter.com/PbvafvTAxL
— Arsenal FC (@Arsenal) January 4, 2015
40 mins: Rosicky and Monreal have been playing the ball back and forth between each other for what feels like a week. In reality, it was probably only about six passes...but still.
38 mins: Arsenal getting going again. Monreal cuts back to Cazorla, who cuts in from the left and shapes to shoot, but instead plays to Campbell who shoots first-time, and it’s deflected wide for a corner.
36 mins: Minor slapstick from Mertesacker. After winning the ball near the edge of his own box, he brings it out, trying but failing to properly bring it under control, then tries to back in to Aluko who backs off, the big German falls over. Free-kick Arsenal.
33 mins: Sanchez does well to take it around/past/through Maguire, but his low cross from the right ain’t no good. Campbell then flicks a ball through but Rosicky had stopped his run. Not quite clicking at the moment.
30 mins: And from the corner, Maguire is free around 15 yards out at the back post, heads down and it goes through at least one defender’s legs, takes a slight deflection but Ospina falls on it to gather.
29 mins: Arsenal very impressive, quick and free-flowing so far, but probably could’ve done with more than the one goal to show for their dominance. On cue, they almost concede as Brady flings over a cross from the left, and Monreal takes the ball off Ince’s head at the far post.
26 mins: Beautiful football from Arsenal. Walcott pops up on the left, knocks it inside to Cazorla who returns the ball with a delightful chipped pass, directly into the winger’s path. Walcott brings it under control well, opens his body but the shot doesn’t have much power or direction, and goes straight at Harper.
25 mins: Close to another chance for Arsenal - Bellerin plays a long ball forward from deep on the right which is just - just - too far ahead of Sanchez for him to take it under control. Incidentally, I did Monreal a disservice with that header a minute ago - it was on target and Harper had to make another fine save with his foot. All Arsenal now.
24 mins: Another Ospina suggestion, from the emails and Bernard O’Leary: ‘He has that same weird, foward-sloping face as Jerome “& Robson” Flynn.’
22 mins: Arsenal go within a whisker of making it two. Rosicky drives through the defence superbly and nips a pass through to Sanchez, who skips around Harper and quickly flicks the ball towards goal, but McShane is just as quick, sliding in to make a quite brilliant and crucial sliding block. From the corner, Monreal gets his head to it at the near post, which via a deflection it hits and bounces away to safety.
20 mins: Walcott wins a corner after zipping across a ball from the right that is headed behind, and from that it couldn’t be easier for Arsenal. Sanchez hoys over the ball from the left and Mertesacker is there in the centre of goal to beat a couple of defenders to the header, forcing it home.
GOAL! Arsenal 1-0 Hull (Mertsesacker 20)
BFG with a BFH.
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18 mins: Hull win a corner after Hector Bellerin makes a fine sliding interception, but it results in nothing more exciting than a weak Paul McShane header.
17 mins: Ospina nomination from Twitter...
@NickMiller79 Ospina looks a bit like Bruce Campbell
— thechuckchinaski (@ChuckChinaski) January 4, 2015
I’ll take that...
Damien Clarke, via email, is a little less helpful: ‘He looks exactly like my mate Craig. How do you know him?’
15 mins: Tom Ince has looked lively, perhaps a surprise given his wet fart of a loan spell at Nottingham Forest, and he cuts in from the right dangerously, beats a man then shoots low, but it goes just wide of the near post.
14 mins: Close from Arsenal. Cazorla feeds Walcott, who slips the ball through to Sanchez on the right side of the area. A splendid Maguire sliding block stops his first attempt, so the Chilean stops and tries a scooped shot which drifts over defenders and keeper, but also the bar.
13 mins: David Ospina looks like someone and I can’t quite put my finger on who. Any nominations from the floor?
12 mins: First sign of life from Walcott - Coquelin clips a nice ball over the top looking for the Arsenal speedster, but it’s just too far ahead and Harper sees it out for a goal-kick.
10 mins: Quinn goes down under a quite a robust challenge from Coquelin, but seemed to suffer more pain from going over on his ankle a little. He hobbles off though, should be OK to carry on.
9 mins: Wenger’s popped a big coat on now, and perhaps mindful of cameras and internet banter accounts, doesn’t bother struggling with the zip for too long.
8 mins: A build-up of possession culminates in a McShane cross from the right, skimmed at around head-height, but it’s nodded away before it can reach Sagbo in the middle.
7 mins: Hull keeping the thing quite well here. Looks like a fairly bog-standard 4-4-2 formation, as well. Plenty of emphasis on Tom Huddlestone in that system.
6 mins: Increasingly tricky to hear Monreal’s name without singing the Monorail song from the Simpsons.
4 mins: Oh! Arsenal go very close. Some slick play between Sanchez and Campbell sets the latter away through the middle of the box, his shot is kicked away by Harper in the Hull nets, then Sanchez goes down trying to retrieve the rebound. No penalty, though.
3 mins: Not much of any import has happened thus far. Ian Copestake makes a salient point about the choice of the TV companies: ‘I would have thought the BBC’s unique form of funding would allow them to show the games that most fit the FA Cup spirit of the big against the little rather than having to worry about viewing figures.’
1 min: And Hull begin the game. Martin Keown on co-comms for the Beeb. How do we feel about that, Hullsters?
The teams are out on the pitch. Wenger has gone with a daring suit/cardigan combo, which in this weather - meteorologists described conditions outside the Guardian earlier, a few miles away from the Emirates, as ‘cold as balls’ - is either bold or foolhardy.
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Or...
Bullard looks like an aging stripper.
— John Nicholson (@JohnnyTheNic) January 4, 2015
Jimmy Bullard, punditing for the BBC, looks like a Las Vegas magician. Presumably his white tiger is just out of shot, being fed meat off-cuts by Lawro.
Nice shirt Jimmy Bullard is almost wearing, there...
Live 3rd round FA Cup tie between Arsenal & Hull City is on @BBCOne . I'll be with Shearer & @jimmybullard at 5.20 pic.twitter.com/GQ5C4TkcL4
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) January 4, 2015
Plenty of changes for both sides then - Hull making ten, with only Curtis Davies from the win over Everton retaining his place.
By necessity Arsenal haven’t made quite as many, but there’s a first start since his knee injury for Theo Walcott, while Joel Campbell, advised by those whelps at Stoke to ‘get out while you can’ as if he was a benched Ronaldo circa 1997 or a prisoner of war or something, gets some time in the middle as well.
Another notable starter is Alexis Sanchez, and while obviously Wenger isn’t exactly flush with centre-forward options, it’s worth noting these quotes from the Arsenal manager, from December 5:
He is in the red zone. You can see that when he plays but he can dig deep. He played his 27th game on Wednesday since the start of the season, if you consider international games and travelling on top of that. Unfortunately you never know how far you can push it. We are not scientific enough to predict that completely but he has good recovery potential. He recovers very quickly.
Since then Alexis has started all but the trip to Galatasaray, granted a break of four whole minutes in the other six league games. One wonders then, if Wenger will be surprised or consider it bad luck if the Chilean’s hamstring explodes today?
Ospina lives!
Team news
Arsenal
Ospina; Bellerin, Chambers, Mertesacker, Monreal; Coquelin, Rosicky; Cazorla, Walcott, Campbell; Alexis. Subs: Martinez, Debuchy, Koscielny, Zelalem, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Maitland-Niles, Akpom
Hull
Harper: McShane, Figueroa, Davies, Maguire; Huddlestone, Quinn, Brady, Ince; Aluko, Sagbo. Subs: McGregor, Bruce, Meyler, Hernandez, Livermore, Elmohamady, Dawson.
Referee: Robert Madley (Wakefield)
So then. The FA Cup. The competition that pits plucky underdogs against the big boys. Of course the marvelous random nature of the draw ensures that there also often games that we could see any week in the Premier League, such as this one. Which is not to say that such games have no merit, and should certainly provide more of a contest and spectacle than Dover v Crystal Palace earlier, even if it does lack all the other stuff.
And the complaints, while perhaps justified, that the TV companies would prefer to televise this sort of game rather than, say, Blyth Spartans v Birmingham do at least spare us some of the patronising guff that comes with the whole David v Goliath thing. Not least because we won’t have to see Jake Humphreys or whoever keep a straight face while calling a team like Birmingham ‘Goliath’. Plus, after this the telly people will solemnly produce the viewing figures and tell you that more people watched Everton v West Ham than Dover v Palace. If more people watch, more games like that will get on.
This one of course does have a slight ‘angle’ to it, given that both sides last FA Cup opponents will also be their next. Arsenal beat Hull in the final last season in what is increasingly looking like should have been Arsene Wenger’s leaving party, allowing him to depart the club he built with some sense of pride, rather than shredding his legacy at every turn. Here’s what Wenger said after that game:
We waited a long time for this and the happiness is linked sometimes with the suffering, and the time that you have to wait...
This was more important than all the others. We have twice won the double, but were not under pressure then like we were today.
This is an important moment in the life of this team; to lose today would have been a major setback, but winning gives us a good platform to come back stronger next year.
And, on the subject of why Wenger didn’t go out after that moment of glory, here’s Amy Lawrence from November:
During what might be described as the post-silverware honeymoon, I went to London Colney, the serene training complex in Hertfordshire he helped to design, to meet Wenger. He had agreed to talk to me as part of my research for a book about Arsenal’s Invincible team. Of course the subject matter and the environment was completely different to the usual rat-a-tat newslines pursued in the modern day press conference, but the man himself was different too.
It was striking how relaxed he was, how engaged he seemed to be talking in depth about the game, its nuances, and the finest details which illuminated his work. This was not the Wenger who had looked so haggard and prickly for the latter half of last season. This was the Wenger of old, with spark and humour and the brainy dedication to the game that once upon a time made such a powerful impact on English football. The lines had eased on his face. The stress of a horrible few months had melted away.
You wonder whether another FA Cup win would inspire the same feeling. They start to find out shortly.
Kick-off: 5.30
Nick will be here shortly with all the team news before the 5.30pm kick-off. In the meantime, here’s the latest on Lukas Podolski’s Arsenal exit:
Lukas Podolski’s transfer to Inter Milan moved closer on Saturday when the Germany forward met coach Roberto Mancini at the Serie A side’s training ground and said his goodbyes to Arsenal.
“The World Cup winner was at the Centro Sportivo Angelo Moratti today to get to know his new training ground and meet the Nerazzurri coach,” an Inter statement said as media reported that a medical had been passed and he would soon sign.
“New year, new beginnings. #ForzaInter #Mancini” Podolski wrote on his Instagram social media page, alongside a picture with Mancini. Earlier on the same site, Podolski had said goodbye to Arsenal fans.
“I can’t express in words my gratitude towards Arsenal fans for all they have done for me in my years in London. Please know my heart always holds a place for you,” Podolski said.
