Gooner Wembley mash-up special guests a rugby league team

[1989]

Podolski seems to get off so easily with the fans despite his anonymous performances. He goes into hiding in every big game. Wenger made the right decision taking him off, he was a passenger out there. Extremely limited player as well; if he doesn't get a sight of goal with the ball on his left foot, he's utterly useless.

[storrmin571]

Nothing worth celebrating - happy to be in a final again. The game was shocking. Wigan on penalties is not worth celebrating.

[milesgooner]

Agree that taking Pod off was the right choice.
We needed something different and playing 442 was the right choice.
Agree that Pod gets away with a multitude of sins from most fans on here.
Sanogo should be nowhere near any first team in the premier league but he didn't hide and the pair up front finally started to worry their back 4.
However seeing us play like a John Beck/Graham Taylor all star team was soul destroying.
How Wenger (the man that bought Henry & Pires) thought that playing with a Giroud/Sanogo type of forward was going to progress the team is a mystery.
I think we will win the FA cup,finish 5th and say au revoir to him.

[nut flush gooner]

Podolski seems to get off so easily with the fans despite his anonymous performances. He goes into hiding in every big game. Wenger made the right decision taking him off, he was a passenger out there. Extremely limited player as well; if he doesn't get a sight of goal with the ball on his left foot, he's utterly useless.

Totally agree, another insipid performance and gooners seem to want to ignore his lack of passion/workrate.

I didn't get why monreal played ahead of gibbs who imo looked pretty sharp when he came on.

Fans where good yesterday, but wembley is a souless bowl, you cant really hear a lot from the lower tiers and therefore it was only a few songs that where sung in unison by the whole end.

Bumped into some wigan fans in a curry house in central london, all very amicable and good banter. Felt almost apologetic as no way did we outplay them.

[Theoperator]

Having seeen us win V WBA on pens this season I wasnt bricking the pens, Arteta for all his lack of pace is a top pen taker, only Santis wasnt a good pen. Glad to see kalstrom score in his second game . Funny how we are usually pretty good at pens at least


Cant tell you though how stressful watching pens like that was with 25 family members not one who has a shred of Gooner support in them (All my in law family )

Gnabry is injured by the way

Wasnt so bothered by the selfie this week, quite funny really as it was a match photographers camera, and like the play they probably forget to turn it on anyway and missed the shot ,

Aside from lack of tactics, which Lee Dixon made a rather embarrassed reference to I am just shocked at how short we are in options at the moment, thank fuck we did have Kallstrom, and poor Ox was totally knackered but no one to take his place at all.

Recently heard a Physio from Bristol rugby club talk, waht a privilege- seemed to know more about sports injuries than the whole of the Arsenal medical teams "brains". Interesting the Bristol absence from injuries is around 5% this season. Several interesting comments he made though, one of which was the notion of slowly bring players back as we do in football is actually he thought total bunkum.

someone at The Arsenal needs to sign him up. Course he is Irish too

[donaldo]

Podolski seems to get off so easily with the fans despite his anonymous performances. He goes into hiding in every big game. Wenger made the right decision taking him off, he was a passenger out there. Extremely limited player as well; if he doesn't get a sight of goal with the ball on his left foot, he's utterly useless.

I would totally agree with you if the two strikers we had left on the pitch were Suarez and Sturridge and not Giroud and the Postman.You could go to any game in the park today and find a better striker than Sanogo.We are the 5th richest club in the world and we have a Kaba Diawara's son playing for us.We paid nothing for him.We were robbed

[Bradywasking]

Going to go against the general feeling and say that I was ok with the players celebrating on the pitch yesterday. It was out of relief as much as joy. If the players had trooped up the tunnel without going to the fans we would all moan and say they were going to check bank balances and go on social media etc. I am not saying it was a fantastic history changing win, what I am saying is the players took some pride in reaching the FA Cup Final and that in itself was good to see.
Oh and yeah..Wenger Out...anyone thinks he came out of yesterday with any credit is as deluded as him.

[LDB]

My main emotion at the end was relief. It is blatantly obvious that playing like will not get us into the top 4 but people thinking we shouldn't have celebrated need to have a word with themselves. If anything it would have been disrespectful to Wigan who are not some sunday league pub side, they're a very good Championship outfit with a side that's not much different to the one they had in the Premier League last season. They were confident and comfortable in their surroundings, they knew quite clearly that they had a chance of beating us.

Has football really got so ridiculous that you're not supposed to celebrate reaching the FA Cup final?

[Bradywasking]

i am a Podolski fan and do believe in the box he is as good as any striker (Aguero and Surez apart) , but yesterday apart from a slight cameo five minutes before the break he was terrible. The decision to sub him was booed by the fans , but where he was playing it was correct, maybe he should have played off Sanogo instead. after thirty minutes I was hoping Gibbs would replace Podolski, he would have offered speed, an ability to go outside the full back and cover for the very ordinary Monreal.
Sanogo is not a top class footballer and with all the will in the world he never will be, he was up for it and his efforts yesterday highlighted how ineffective Giroud has been. Ironically though I thought Giroud was ok yesterday when he came on, maybe as a result of not being the lone striker. Wouldn't be getting carried away, in reality any team that has Sanogo and Giroud as main strikers are not going anywhere any time soon.

[Gunner Rob]

Leaving all criticism aside I would much rather have a day out at Wembley each year rather than a place in the Champions League. Fantastic atmosphere in the pubs pre game, the walk up Wembley Way, superb stuff

[northbank123]

Forgot all this master tactician or fast pressing bollocks. Yesterday we were yet again nullified by a team staying compact and narrow, forcing us out wide where we don't create from. It's so fucking basic it's unreal. Playing Sanogo instead of Giroud did open up the possibility of getting in behind but unfortunately he is completely cack.

Mixed feelings on the Podolski one. He was having a poor game (even more so than the rest of them) but when a team camps back in their own box he is our most dangerous player. If he gets the ball around the corner of the box he is just about the only player we have that will beat a man with ease on the outside. He'll just knock it past them and get a ball across rather than putting his foot on it and taking the sting out of it. But what salvaged the draw was not just going 4-4-2 - it was the decision to start tossing balls into the box which they clearly weren't expecting or equipped to deal with.

[nut flush gooner]

Leaving all criticism aside I would much rather have a day out at Wembley each year rather than a place in the Champions League. Fantastic atmosphere in the pubs pre game, the walk up Wembley Way, superb stuff

Agreed, I will take a year out of the champions league that we dont really have a chance of winning for finally bagging some silverware.

I don't care about the performance, we won and have a massive chance of winning the fucker.

As for celebrating afterwards too fucking right. Yesterday was an emotional roller coaster. You can tell that its stressful when gooners almost come to blows when we are 1-0 down. But at the end it was mental walking out of the stadium and celebrating on olympic way.

I do wonder about the mentality of some gooners.

[MK Gould]

Got a text from a City fan after the game taking the piss for the "OTT celebrations of the fans and players". But I couldn't give a shit. Ok, so the celebration was far more than when we beat Southampton in Cardiff to win the trophy, but it's been 9 years since we reached an FA Cup final FFS...

The people who should be mightily embarrassed are the top brass at the FA who insist on holding these games at Wembley - and then have the consequences beamed around the world i.e. 8000 empty seats out of Wigan's already massively reduced allocation.

[nut flush gooner]

Got a text from a City fan after the game taking the piss for the "OTT celebrations of the fans and players". But I couldn't give a shit. Ok, so the celebration was far more than when we beat Southampton in Cardiff to win the trophy, but it's been 9 years since we reached an FA Cup final FFS...

The people who should be mightily embarrassed are the top brass at the FA who insist on holding these games at Wembley - and then have the consequences beamed around the world i.e. 8000 empty seats out of Wigan's already massively reduced allocation.

Bit rich from a city fan imo. All this sheikhs money seems to go to their heads.

It wasn't 15 years ago that their club where in a sorry state. When they won their first FA cup semi final a few years back do you think they didn't celebrate?

[MK Gould]

Got a text from a City fan after the game taking the piss for the "OTT celebrations of the fans and players". But I couldn't give a shit. Ok, so the celebration was far more than when we beat Southampton in Cardiff to win the trophy, but it's been 9 years since we reached an FA Cup final FFS...

The people who should be mightily embarrassed are the top brass at the FA who insist on holding these games at Wembley - and then have the consequences beamed around the world i.e. 8000 empty seats out of Wigan's already massively reduced allocation.

Bit rich from a city fan imo. All this sheikhs money seems to go to their heads.

It wasn't 15 years ago that their club where in a sorry state. When they won their first FA cup semi final a few years back do you think they didn't celebrate?

Or when they beat the mighty Gillingham in a play off final... !