With Newcastle, Valencia and Man City coming up Villas-Boas is planning to field some of the young players today. So we may well see Bertrand, Lukaku, McEachran and of course Torres starting tonight. It promises to be an interesing evening.
Carling Cup Quarter Final Games - **Spoilers**
- Thread starter Robert1986
- Start date
Clearly you know nothing about Arsenal then, Wenger has always played the youngsters in the CC Cup...its when we get to the semi final and final that he tends to put out a stronger squad.
Ahhh...Torres moves into the next of the Shevchenko phases and gets rolled out only for league cup matches.
RE: Second string, I'm reasonably sure it will be second string with a good spattering of academy, wouldn't be surprised to see 11 changes from Liverpool. Probably not too dissimilar to how you will line up. Someone like Dzeko leading the line ala Wolves, but probably a good 4-5 academy lads, if not all at once making appearances throughout the game. Could go either way, should be a good laugh
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
That's odd because last year Wilshire, Fabregas, RVP, nasri, Rosicky(at the time first team for a bit) Arshavin and our frequent first team pair of Djourou/Kos, played throughout the Carling cup campaign last year.
It was pretty clear last year that Wenger had decided it was our best chance of a cup and put out FAR stronger teams than for most of the previous decade,
Even more so when we played a bigger team did we start a stronger squad ourselves. I seem to remember Redknapp thinking we'd name a side of kids, naming a very weakened side himself, and finding himself up against a fairly first team defence, Nasri, Rosicky and Wilshire in midfield, and bringing on Clichy, Chamakh(first team up till xmas) and Arshavin to finish off the game as well.
As of beginning of last year, Wenger valued the Carling cup as important, as of the day after we lost it........... that might have changed again. We didn't react well to thinking we'd made it in the weakest of the competitions we were in, then throwing it away.
There is also the little fact that, while 8-2 to Utd was horrific, had our complete first team lost 8-2, that would have been worse, at least we can say it was amongst the weakest squads we've put out in the past decade.
Do we want an almost first team to get thrashed by City, or a completely backup team to get thrashed... either way, it shouldn't be pretty.
Also, City fan saying they'll play a weakened team....... lol. Considering Dzeko's lack of starts lately, Zabeleta, Toure, De Jong, Koralov, Nasri, etc, etc. Your "backup" team costs more than most of the leagues first teams, and if you think it will be all youth rather than a few youngsters and anyone who doesn't get many games, well I'd be surprised if the team isn't still incredibly strong.
Well it's not going to be our first team, it will almost certainly have academy lads in it (based on Mancini's own comments, not a stab in the dark), ergo, it will be a weakened team.. not that hard is it?
It may not end up being that weak relative to the Arsenal side it's up against, but that wasn't my point. I didn't even use the word weakened anyway, I said it would be second string, you're just making things up to argue about now 
Last edited:
Spot on, I remember seeing our squad for that game and thinking "Oh crap we are going to get stuffed!"
Caporegime
- Joined
- 9 Mar 2006
- Posts
- 58,023
- Location
- Surrey
You said we had the title completely wrapped up a month ago and no-one else had a chance
I cant wait to see how the overpaid mercernaries like Aguero, Johnson, Lescott, Hart, Richards, Dzeko, Kolarov, Toure and Silva cut it on a cold winters night in London tonight. The 500k per week every player in the squad gets cant soften the blow of having to play in this kind of weather.
- Joined
- 17 Apr 2007
- Posts
- 23,162
- Location
- stat city
They shouldn't get cold if they are running about for 90 minutes... and don't most pitches of heated surfaces?
Liverpool to beat Chelsea and Arsenal to beat Man City.
MCFC, ruining cold winters nights since 2011.
You said we had the title completely wrapped up a month ago and no-one else had a chance
You don't have to follow me around like a puppy, repeating yourself every few days you know
It was a joke, you've got the league + CL wrapped up, you have Rooney.
But they wont be running? they will all be stood around because they dont care about playing football only the money hence why they joined Manchester CityThey shouldn't get cold if they are running about for 90 minutes... and don't most pitches of heated surfaces?
Liverpool to beat Chelsea and Arsenal to beat Man City.
Anyway, 2-0 City. Dzeko and Johnson scoring.
We'll win tonight and I'll go with the Gunners as well. Wouldn’t surprise me if there is extra time. Great the rain’s cleared and it’s going to be cold, time to make a move.
You were handing us the Premier League the other week
Even with that being said you're probably the only one who would argue the fact that United are far more equipped to win the title or UCL than Arsenal
It's one thing doing that against Bolton but against City? Adrianr can try and play down the strength of the probably City starting XI but I'd be very surprised if we're not looking at a team with Dzeko, Nasri & Adam Johnson in attack, Kolo, Zabaleta and Kolarov in defence and De Jong in midfield all players that can be argued could make up City's strongest line up