Arsenal – Leeds (FA Cup) Preview

man city finally got dzeko. thank god we already played our two fixtures against them this season.

Only seem him play twice and although he's scored alot of goals i thought he was distinctly average. I may be wrong but I don't think he's much of a star buy and think that money could be used to buy 3 forwards of equal quality.

ramboo start hopefully

i hope arsenal will win this one

Just heard Sanchez watt is in the squad for Leeds to play against us....strange!

Wenger gave him permission to play

Yup understand that but would be difficult for him. Could you imagine 0-0 last min & he's put in on goal to knock the arsenal out. Would he want to?

Ah ok. Yeah, it would be weird, but players that young always want to play whenever they get a chance.

I also think he's a youngster who might still 'make it' at arsenal

By following the development of Carlos Vela, I have found this newly posted article on the official website:

http://www.arsenal.com/news/ne...

It is now or never for Vela. He has the choice. Vela is very technical and have a decent finish. If he manages to up grade his game, he will be what Arsenal need and can potentially overtake Van Persie's spot.

A bit (a lot) off topic here, I just recently logged into my Twitter that I forgot that I had and I don't think you will notice but I started following this blog....and then everything that resembles it. I even clicked on who the blog had as friends and almost followed everyone on there (Darren, here's looking at you). Just stating so people won't get creeped out. Anyways, nice write up, as always my love for Vela is ever present.

You will likely soon have a chance to watch Vela much more with Coyle knocking at his door.

Yes, it's the stuff of dreams. Also, when Vela is scoring goals of orgasmic and ball shattering nature, remember that I stood alone in the battle field of blind support.

Wenger blames everything but the team for losses and dropped points and that he does it to take attention away from the team – you know that I know that and most level headed football fans know that, but the point I’m making is SOME of your own fans actually believe what he is saying – read the comments and I assume you can see why many opposition fans get so frustrated, becaause over and over again we get told by these same Arsenal fans that Arsenal are the best team in the league, deserve to win everything and many are forecasting you will. They believe this “anti-football” description that Wenger has branded many clubs with and it becomes the reason you don’t win. I’m actually sick to death of hearing that Arsenal should have won the league every year for the last 10 years, that United only win because of luck and referees decisions, that Chelsea only win because of money, that Stoke, Blackburn and any team that dare to actually get stuck into Arsenal are cloggers not footballers. If Wenger is this footballing God that SOME Arsenal fans are suggesting, surely he has the tactics to deal with those teams? I’ve just read one comment that Wenger is “by far the best manager in history” – apparently because of what he has done with the money he has had – he has won 3 titles and 4 FA Cups in 14 years, nothing in the last 5+ years and in that time he has spent about £230m, now I know he has sold a lot of players (mainly in the last 5-6 years) and made the club a huge amount of money as a result, but his job is to make the club succesful and arguably the economic of the club is the job of the board, as such I question the fact that anyone could call him the best manager ever – he has them brainwashed. Cheers

Wrong - If you'd like me to dig up the job description of the manager, I will gladly do so. Part of managing is coaching and part of it is keeping a keen eye on the economic condition of the club and the long term viability of it. Add to it, that his board have likely told him he needs to do the same. He is easily amongst the top managers in the world and yes he does divert negative attention from the club, that's what any good manager will do when its required (i.e. Fergie). Just recently, when it was necessary, AW publicly scolded his squad for a poor performance. So is he now wrong to do that too? Can he win? Can Arsenal fans, who are angered at the thought of 2 of their players with great potential have career threatening injuries due to clubs like Stoke & Blackburn playing rugby on the pitch instead of footie, win?

I have to admit I think Wenger is incredibly clever, how he has done this I really don’t know, but now when Arsenal fail to win or actually lose, SOME of Arsenal’s fan believe that it is not the fault of the side, it is the tactics adopted by the opposition or some other outside factor – Pitch doctoring, mud, etc. Over the last few days I have witnessed SOME Arsenal fans blaming City’s tactics for Arsenal’s inability to win, I have seen Sydney blame Arsenal’s recent loss at United on the grass being too long and the previous loss last season on mud. For sometime now I have seen SOME Arsenal fans blame the Tactics of teams like Stoke, Blackburn etc for Arsenal’s inability to beat those teams. The thing is if United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs, City in fact 99% of other teams fail to beat a side the majority of the fans will come on here and blame their own team’s tactics, their manager’s choice of players, individual players for not turning up, or in many cases the opposition team for the way they played. So like I say fair play to Wenger he has SOME Arsenal fans under some sort of spell that makes them believe that they are the most attractive team in the world, they play the best football, they never lose or draw because of the way they have played, many losses or draws are the result of other teams negative or underhand tactics and he has them believing this even though they have won absolutely nothing for nearly 6 years. I cannot believe any other manager in the league has been able to pull this off, I truly believe that Wenger is the most untouchable manager in footballing history, not because of what he has achieved and won, but because of the aura he has built up around himself and his team – Hats off to him. Cheers

I'm not sure what Arsenal fans you are hanging around with or why you come here just to bash Wenger, but here goes:

-- I'm not sure what you mean by blaming other teams' tactics for our failure to beat them. Football is generally a game played by two teams, each of whom undertakes a strategy to score as many goals as possible and conceding as few goals as possible. For any given result, there are basically three variables: luck, quality of players, and tactics. Many times the results is down to tactics. Therefore, it's not really an insult to our opponents to say "we lost because of their tactics." It is, essentially, saying that "we lost because they figured out the best way to play us and executed that plan." The irony of your argument is if we didn't do that, and said, "we lost because we were crappy," people would accuse Arsenal fans of being arrogant and not giving the other team enough credit. Sometimes we just can't win.

-- I don't think Arsene Wenger is the greatest manager ever, but he is Arsenal's greatest manager ever. And in the Premiership Era, he is almost certainly in the top 2, alongside Ferguson.

-- This must be your first time reading the site, because I invite you to come on here after any Arsenal failure to win -- you will see widespread criticism of Wenger, our tactics, and our players. Again, not sure which Arsenal fans to which you are referring, but they're not the ones who write for this site or comment here.

-- As far as the anti-football thing, yes, you are right, of course. Blackburn and Stoke play breathtakingly entertaing football, featuring world-class athletes showcasing amazing skill. Time and again I find myself pausing and rewatching sections of Stoke games while asking myself, "Wow, did you see how far he kicked that ball upfield -- that was at least 60 yards?!" and "The guy with the ball got close to him, so he just kicked the shit of him -- Bravo!" Honestly, if you don't understand the criticism of their styles of play, there's not much I can do. No one says they can't play that way, or that it isn't effective, but we just think it's bad for the game. It's boring, it leads to a lot of injuries, and it's just much, much less compelling to watch than when teams actually try to play the ball along the ground and attack.

Brilliantly well spoken comment.

Kasper Schmeichel? Alex Bruce? Way too many ManUtd connections in there!

Also, I though we had the new Schmeichel? ;)

And this was supposed to be a reply! c'mon Disqusitooo!!

Oh Disqus Disques, this was supposed to be an answer to Sairax on the Keane news..

Hahaha, I agree, disapp to see that happened , but as Martino said, lets take advantage, this is actually what trophies are made of, good perfs and a bit of luck..?

You are right about Leeds , I ve said things about them a few times over here, as a matter of fact saying that they were a good team that got lots of bad luck in order for us to watch out our backs.

Leeds is Leeds, they have history and I cant say anything more, we should go out and play thinking that.

On the other hand I dont quite like our team for this one...but I guess some guys deserve a chance. I still dont like Eboue at the back, as much as I like him a little fwd, and Eastmond and Denilson...bah just not my choice these days, but then again I am not AW and hope I am deadly wrong. (even if this is not the sure team, you come up real close every time)

Luciano Becchio.......that name is ringing a bell......I can't remember how I know him though. Maybe the Barca connection, but I feel like I know him from somewhere else....

Leeds fans are definitely still around in huge numbers. I remember there were a TON of them at Old Trafford last season for the FA Cup tie, so I expect to see a loud away section at the Emirates.

Not much else to say except I want some sweet sweet Leeds revenge. Yeah it's only an early FA Cup round, and yeah it's a Championship Leeds side. But still. ;)

You always nail the starting lineups :)

I'm on a hot streak lately, but these domestic cups are always tough, because you never know just how much he's going to rotate. My sense on this one is that even though the FA Cup is the more prestigious competition, he's going to rotate a lot more for this one than the Carling Cup semifinal match on Wednesday, where I suspect we'll see a lot more guys like Cesc, Nasri, and Song.

Arsenal confirms that van Persie, Nasri, Wilshere, and Koscielny will all be rested tomorrow, which changes the squad picture a bit. I had picked Wilshere and van Persie to be rested, and Nasri on the bench.

Koscielny getting a rest will be interesting. My instinct is that it means that Djourou & Squillaci will start, but don't rule out the possibility of Ignasi Miquel, who has played well for the Reserves this year, to make his first team debut.

I expect this also means that we could see either Vela or JET on the bench and in line for a late substitute appearance as well.

Ah. At the end of the press conference, Wenger said that Vela would be involved, but JET would not. He also confirmed that Ramsey would be in the squad. I expect the crowd is going to go nuts for him, as they should. It could be a goosebumps moment.

So good to see Ramsey back, man I love the guy, I hope he overcomes his fear in the 50 50 balls, and I hope he scores in one final for us! There!

Roy Keane was fired as Ipswich Town manager late yesterday, which makes the Carling Cup semifinal slightly less interesting. Still, important thing is for us to take advantage of the disorder there and beat them on their home pitch in the first leg so we can rotate the squad a bit for the second leg.

boooooo half the fun was going to be facing him!

Interesting stat from OptaJoe on Twitter: Arsenal have only lost one home FA Cup match in the Wenger era. To . . . you guessed it -- Leeds, in the 4th Round, in 1997.

great arrticle

Looking back I can remember two big stories swirling around during last summer. One of course was Cesc, and his going. The other was that renewals of season tickets had collapsed and that the stadium would. The rest simply wouldn’t renew, and wouldn’t buy.

So the stadium would be half empty as the majority of fans disappeared like drops of snow in the Sahara.

We here on Untold thought this was totally ridiculous and when you look at the stadium it mostly is nicely filled and the chance to go to the stadium and buy a match ticket at the official Arsenal selling point are as high as finding that drop of snow in the dessert.

The move to the Emirates has been a big move for Arsenal. And a move I have supported all the way. But I have to admit a very personal interest in this change, for I thought it would be the way for myself and my friend finally to have the chance to buy tickets and to go and see home games. And it did work out that way for me.

Now building a new stadium and a big stadium costs money as we all know. And it is a big risk for a club and it takes a lot of money away from possible transfer funds for a few years. And most clubs who have built a new stadium in the not so distant past have paid a heavy price. Many of those clubs have gone down the league and have almost disappeared from of our view. If you look down the league tables you can find them but for some clubs you really have to look deep. Southampton is an obvious example.

But many clubs dream of doing an Arsenal, and building a new and bigger stadium is part of that dream. And of course one of the biggest questions when you build a new and bigger stadium is: can we fill it? Because it may look nice to do it but if you find afterwards an empty stadium with no fans in it you have wasted a lot of money.

Now we all know that the move has been a big success for Arsenal in attendances. As the average attendance in our last year at Highbury was 38.184 people per game it went to +60.000 since our move to the Emirates.

Now the average attendance does not give the full picture. If you have a capacity of 100.000 people and only 50.000 turn up you might have a big crowd, but your stadium is way too big. And it would be stupid to have such a big stadium if you can only half fill it.

So I think it is important to not just look at the average crowds in the stadiums but also take a look at the capacity. And see how a club can fill its ground.

And I have done some research and I have trusted the official Premier league site for this. So it the numbers are wrong you should blame the EPL for giving false information. For those who just don’t like to read much numbers you can skip the tables and just read some conclusions I made in between and at the end.

And the numbers I have found are telling me that Arsenal is the real people’s champion in the last 4 years, you know the years of failure of the worst period in our history and other blah, blah, blah. For this season we have so far:

Team Capacity 10/11 Avg %
Arsenal 60361 60046 99,48
Man Utd 75797 74928 98,85
Fulham 25478 24979 98,04
Stoke 27500 26853 97,65
Chelsea 42449 41437 97,62
Blackpool 16100 15617 97,00
Man City 47715 46260 96,95
Wolves 29303 26966 92,02
Liverpool 45522 41751 91,72
WBA 26500 23940 90,34
Tottenham 36230 32515 89,75
Everton 40157 35967 89,57
Newcastle 52339 46544 88,93
Aston Villa 43786 37617 85,91
West Ham 35303 30313 85,87
Birmingham 30079 25009 83,14
Bolton 27879 22676 81,34
Sunderland 49000 38565 78,70
Blackburn 31367 23837 75,99
Wigan 25133 15761 62,71

If you look at this table for the current season you can see that Arsenal is the team that sells the highest percentage of available tickets in the EPL Closely followed by Man Utd and to my big surprise Fulham in third place. They have a small ground but they do tend to fill it up rather nicely this season and even with the fact that they are on the wrong side of the table doesn’t stop their fans from coming.

And even Stoke has a very solid fan base so it seems as they even beat Chelsea when it comes to filling their stadium. And at the bottom we find Wigan who really looks in trouble to fill their stadium. May I also point at the fact that our close neighbours and rivals Tottenham only manage to fill their stadium to around 90%. And this is really low if you compare this to other seasons.

Certainly if you compare this to last season in the next table:

Team Capacity 09/10 Avg %
Arsenal 60361 59927 99,28
Tottenham 36230 35794 98,80
Stoke 27500 27162 98,77
Man Utd 75797 74864 98,77
Chelsea 42449 41423 97,58
Wolves 29303 28366 96,80
West Ham 35303 33683 95,41
Man City 47715 45513 95,39
Liverpool 45522 42864 94,16
Fulham 25478 23909 93,84
Everton 40157 36725 91,45
Aston Villa 43786 38573 88,09
Birmingham 30079 25246 83,93
Sunderland 49000 40355 82,36
Blackburn 31367 25428 81,07
Bolton 27879 21881 78,49
Wigan 25133 17998 71,61

Again Arsenal top the table but last season Tottenham came in second in filling the stadium just in front of ….Stoke and then only United. At the bottom the same familiar names.

For those who like more numbers, here you go…

Team Capacity 08/09 Avg %
Arsenal 60361 60040 99,47
Man Utd 75797 75304 99,35
Tottenham 36230 35929 99,17
Stoke 27500 26954 98,01
Chelsea 42449 41484 97,73
WBA 26500 25828 97,46
Liverpool 45522 43611 95,80
Fulham 25478 24340 95,53
West Ham 35303 33700 95,46
Newcastle 52339 48750 93,14
Aston Villa 43786 39812 90,92
Man City 47715 42900 89,91
Everton 40157 35667 88,82
Sunderland 49000 40168 81,98
Bolton 27879 22486 80,66
Blackburn 31367 23479 74,85
Wigan 25133 18350 73,01

And to round it up

Team Capacity 07/08 Avg %
Man Utd 75797 75691 99,86
Arsenal 60361 60070 99,52
Tottenham 36230 35967 99,27
Newcastle 52339 51321 98,05
West Ham 35303 34601 98,01
Chelsea 42449 41397 97,52
Liverpool 45522 43532 95,63
Fulham 25478 23774 93,31
Aston Villa 43786 40372 92,20
Sunderland 49000 43344 88,46
Man City 47715 42126 88,29
Everton 40157 34985 87,12
Birmingham 30079 26181 87,04
Blackburn 31367 23916 76,25
Wigan 25133 19046 75,78
Bolton 27879 20901 74,97

So the bottom line is that Arsenal always have sold out + 99% of their tickets on average during the last 3 seasons and the current season. United who was topping this table in 07-08 has been dropping since and have lost almost one percent. We just lost a few people. Readers of some other blog I suppose.

Tottenham is very strange as they also had a high average attendance in the last season, even the second best last season behind Arsenal, and now this season it has dropped with 10%. I have checked the numbers again and again but this is what the official PL site has told me. Who am I to doubt them. So dreaming of a 50.000 stadium can look nice but if you cannot fill it, it is a big and costly gamble to take.

What also is a bit surprising, well it is to me, is the fact that Stoke is ending rather high when it comes to filling their smaller ground. Ever since they came to the EPL they have had a high percentage of around 97-98%. So there still is an audience for the old school kick them till they lay down-football. Or is the art of the long throw that makes football popular in those parts of the world. Or maybe there is really nothing else to do in Stoke on any day of the week? I’m not that familiar with live in Stoke so I cannot know why they have such a high percentage. I’m counting on you to inform me on this.

Manchester City is on the up coming from around 88% a few season ago to around 96% now. And Liverpool is going the other way. The “best fans in the world” only filled about 95% of their stadium a few seasons ago and this is dropping to around 91% this season. So also not looking that good on the need to build a new and bigger stadium.

I will leave it for now and leave it up to you to have a look at another team and see how it is filling their stadium. But I do know that the predictions on how empty the Emirates would be after all those “bad and miserable years” was based on nothing. Arsenal fans are the most loyal and trustful fans in the world and they prove it by coming to the Emirates for every game. But didn’t we already knew this?

Off-topic, but very good stuff. That's what's so laughable to me about Tottenham and West Ham each jockeying to try to get to play their home games in the new Olympic Stadium after the 2012 games. Both teams have some trouble filling their stadiums as it is, and it's ridiculous to think either would be able to come anywhere near filling an 80,000 seat stadium which would surpass Old Trafford as the largest seating capacity in the Premiership. It's like watching two bald men fight over a comb.