Ouch! Well, I don't think I've ever seen us concede 6 goals before. Somehow, it all seemed to go to pieces at the end of the first half. At 1-1 we were in the game and then they suddenly score three goals - from, I'd like to point out, a dodgy free kick, a handball and an offside. If you look at it that way, and remember Hyypia had a goal (rightly) disallowed to offside, it could have been 4-3 to us if all those decisions had gone our way. Obviously, I wouldn't expect them all to go our way, but the fact is they did all go Arsenal's (at least one rightly, but probably two wrongly)
More concerning than this result - where both teams were largely reserves anyway - is the loss of two further players, Gonzalez and Garcia, to long term injury. Aside from the fact that with Kewell and Zenden also long term injuries this leaves our left side very short, Garcia is spectacularly important for us, especially in Europe, and now misses the chance to face his former club (Barca).
The Carling Cup has not been kind to us this year, also dealing Sissoko a long term injury, in light of which I can not only approve of Benitez's resting most of his key players but also be glad we're out. A likely final run of Spurs and Chelsea, even if we had got past Arsenal, meant we weren't so close to silverware anyway. Instead, we can now concentrate on league form (if Arsenal are so much better than us, as some have suggested after these two results, how come we're above them in the Premiership?)
Injuries to players of the calibre of Henry can do terrible things to a team's form...
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