In his 19-year of being a head manager of Arsenal, Wenger has never tasted a joy of wining at Sheffield. We are all fighting for each other.
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Speaking about the game, which Wednesday won comfortably, Wenger added: “We weren’t at the level to play a team like Sheffield Wednesday”.
Arsene Wenger kindly did this previewer’s job for him team news-wise, summarising that: “There are no new problems from Saturday”. Aaron Ramsey, Rosicky, Wilshere and Welbeck are unavailable due to long-term injuries.
Wednesday’s opener was a real moment of quality as the enterprising Barry Bannan set Daniel Pudil free down the left and the left-back put in a superb pass to find Wallace, who did the rest from the edge of the area.
While the Gunners fielded an unfamiliar line up, they still boasted a side full of internationals with the likes of Petr Cech, Mathieu Debuchy, Per Mertesacker and Mathieu Flamini all starting for the Gunners.
“We’re on the way back” the home crowd sang joyously – and on the evidence of the impressive first half by the hosts, the sleeping giants may well be worth a tenner of anyone’s money to be promoted to the Premier League come next May.
Both teams go into the fourth round clash in great form with Sheffield Wednesday on a eight-game unbeaten run in all competitions.
Carlos Carvalhal’s men impressively saw off Premier League Newcastle 1-0 at St James Park in the previous round but will probably need an even better performance to topple the high-flying Gunners.
I think we had a lot of the ball, we just didn’t make a lot with the ball because we did not create anything. “It is not zero”. The level of the Championship has gone up and you see that once you have not enough of experience to deal with these types of games, you have no chance to win it.
With two of our more experienced attackers off injured, we looked toothless and Wednesday made us pay after running out deserved 3-0 winners to send us crashing out of the Capital One Cup.
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Carvalhal has plenty of injury concerns for the fixture, with Michael Turner, Alex Lopez, Marco Matias and Modou Sougou definitely ruled out, while Kieren Westwood, Sam Hutchinson and Glenn Loovens are fitness doubts. Goalkeeper Joe Wildsmith, 19, will definitely start for the Owls.
