FA Cup Hangover: Jakupovic Frustrates Arsenal; Chelsea Bully Man City Kids

It was less a spectacle and more a compelling 90-minute advertisement for the abolition of FA Cup replays.

Even those that have spent the past week chained to the gates outside Football Association headquarters, voraciously decrying the purported death knell of one of English football’s last remaining idiosyncrasies, will have endured Arsenal’s plodding goalless draw with Hull City and recalled the Woody Allen line: "The food here is terrible and the portions are too small."

Lunchtime kick-offs are often sedate affairs and this was similarly pedestrian. A perfect game to watch under a duvet, it was possible to drift off for 10 minutes and wake up to find Arsenal were still trying to complete the move they had started when your eyes first felt heavy.

Even for staunch traditionalists Arsene Wenger and Steve Bruce, whose sides played out a thrilling final two years ago, it appears the magic and romance of the world’s oldest cup competition has waned.

Like an old married couple they smiled in all the right places on cue, yet the 19 combined changes they made to their starting XIs suggested there were other love interests vying for attention. Illicit dates with (Lionel) Messi and Mick (McCarthy) on Tuesday evening seemingly played on the minds of Wenger and Bruce all afternoon.

Wenger, to his credit at full-time, spoke out against proposals to decide all FA Cup ties on the day and do away with replays altogether.

"I said I like the English formula because it's a little bit special," he said per Arsenal's official website. 

Wenger added: "The frustration is that we didn't score and it's not what we wanted, to have a replay, but between that and going out, we choose the replay."

A replay will likely be scheduled for the week starting March 7. This could mean Arsenal playing two days after the north London derby against Tottenham Hotspur. It’s even worse for Hull, with the Tigers already facing seven games in 24 days, starting on Tuesday against Ipswich Town.

Had either manager picked a full-strength side, a replay may not have been required.

When the camera panned to Arsenal fans in the crowd, most wore the haunted look of bored fathers attending a school production of some awful musical. The majority would have been happy to witness their child’s solitary line, or a goal—whichever came first—before leaving quietly through the back door. There would be no such respite.

Instead what played out was an hour-and-a-half extended training session of defence versus attack. The Emirates Stadium's broadband provider had declared a state of emergency before half-time.

Hull’s back six, which effectively became a back 10 when Arsenal were in possession, was so conservative Mary Whitehouse gave a one-woman standing ovation at the end of both halves. The away side's lone striker Adama Diomande played in a different postcode to the rest of his team-mates.

Quite why Wenger felt the need to employ two holding midfielders against a Championship side’s second string is a mystery up there with how the Egyptians built the pyramids. All afternoon Mathieu Flamini and Mohamed Elneny looked like pair of bouncers perplexed as to why they’d been asked to run the door of a nightclub at 1 p.m. in the afternoon.

Arsenal enjoyed, if that’s the right word, 70 per cent possession and rained in 24 shots on Hull goalkeeper Eldin Jakupovic’s goal. They also had credible penalty appeals turned down when Alex Bruce blocked a shot with his arm, and David Meyler brought down Calum Chambers from behind.

In this sense, the home side did enough to feel slightly aggrieved at having to squeeze a replay into a fixture list already congested to the point toll booths are being mooted as a solution.

What profligacy won’t excuse, though, is the fact that the first 70 minutes had the look and feel of a testimonial.

Few would have been surprised had Bruce substituted himself on to play the final quarter of an hour alongside son Alex at centre-half.

It would have been like when David and Brooklyn Beckham played together in that UNICEF charity match last year, albeit the chants from the stands may have focused more on the fat than fit factor. If only Jonathan Wilkes hadn’t been away promoting latest tome Robbie and Me: Volume XII, Wenger would have been able to rest Flamini.

An alacrity that was required from the start only materialised in the latter stages. By this time in a state of panic, Wenger had summoned from the substitutes’ bench Alexis Sanchez, Olivier Giroud and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. It was too late. By then Jakupovic was living out the old David Bowie song Heroes. Even a substitute goalkeeper can be a hero, just for one day. 

Indeed, it was Jakupovic’s performance—and endearing embrace with his young daughter Elina at full-time—that kept the fire burning for those who still see the FA Cup as more than just a vexatious commitment to be dutifully fulfilled.

Jakupovic, who has not played a single Championship game this season, made 11 saves in total. It was the most by any opposition goalkeeper at the Emirates in 2015/16.

The pick was a sprawling effort that saw him stretch every sinew, like an eagle’s wingspan in full flight, to brush an extended fingertip against the ball and divert Joel Campbell’s low free-kick onto the post.

Danny Welbeck was similarly incredulous when Bosnian-born, Swiss-raised Jakupovic performed a mid-flight change of direction to tip over with the hand he hadn’t led with, after the ball had taken a deflection off Curtis Davies.

After watching his save from Campbell replayed on the stadium’s giant screen, Jakupovic blew out extravagantly and jiggled his hand with an actor’s flourish. It was a showman’s performance and one that recalled Jan Tomaszewski’s for Poland at Wembley that denied England a place at the 1974 World Cup finals.

The journalist Frank Keating in the Guardian wrote of Tomaszewski at the time: "He hurled himself arms, knees and bumps-a-daisy all over his penalty area like a slackly strung marionette.

"And all with a half-taunting, half-surprised smile which made one think this might be his first-ever game."

He could have been describing Jakupovic. It may not have been his first-ever game, but it was just a 15th in four years.

Bruce and Wenger could live without a replay, but few would dispute that the day’s only real hero—on a lifeless afternoon in capital—deserves at least one more game between now and the campaign’s conclusion.

City kids crushed by Chelsea as Pellegrini prioritises elsewhere

Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Manuel Pellegrini will argue the Manchester City side he selected for Sunday’s FA Cup tie was not the proverbial sacrificial lamb, but when stand-in captain Aleksander Kolarov gave a jar of mint sauce to Branislav Ivanovic in exchange for a Chelsea club pennant just before kick-off, it was a foreboding sign of what was to come.

Apparently, over the next 11 days, City will travel 3,600 miles in their pursuit of a quadruple treble. This season’s FA Cup journey stops in west London though, after Pellegrini made good on his warning to field an understrength side at Stamford Bridge with a midweek Champions League trip to Kiev in mind, along with Sunday’s Capital One Cup final against Liverpool.

The Chilean would never cede as much, but there was a sense he was also out to prove a point after his pleas to play the game a day or two earlier had fallen on deaf ears.

It’s one of football’s unspoken but golden rules that you can’t be cruel to young players. Thus the narrative is supposed to go that Manchester City’s youngsters gave a good account of themselves but ultimately came undone against a quality Chelsea side.

All of which would be true, were it not for the fact Chelsea won 5-1, had a penalty saved, hit the post and could have scored three or four more. If that was City’s youngsters having a good go, what would constitute getting an old-fashioned shooing?

To throw a bunch of kids together, however precociously talented they may be as individuals, and expect anything other than elimination is akin to chucking paint onto a canvas and hoping for a masterpiece. It worked for Jackson Pollock, less so for Pellegrini.

City made nine changes to the side that lost to Tottenham Hotspur in their last Premier League game, with six teenagers in the starting XI. Five of whom were making their debuts. Moonchester was also due to start but pulled up just before kick-off complaining of a temperature. He should try taking off that big furry head.

David Faupala, Tosin Adarabioyo, Bersant Celina, Aleix García, Manu García, Brandon Barker and Cameron Humphreys are all, I’m sure, fine young prospects but as a collective, the whole here was so much weaker than the sum of its parts.

After being such a curmudgeon with regards to City, it would be difficult to say with any conviction that Sunday’s victory was a definitive statement on Chelsea’s part either. Yet in terms of only being able to beat what is put in front of you, it was a performance of sparkling vitality from Hiddink’s rejuvenated side.

Billionaires rarely acquire staggering amounts of money by erring on the side of caution, but if Roman Abramovich wants a solid, dependable, easy-fit solution to his ongoing search for a new manager, he’d be crazy to look beyond Hiddink.

What the Dutchman inherited from Jose Mourinho was a mess. A talented mess, but a mess all the same. Just as he dealt with the debris of Luiz Felipe Scolari’s ill-fated spell in 2009 with minimum fuss, he’s doing likewise again seven years on. Don’t rule out a second FA Cup success for Hiddink in as many attempts either.

No player is enjoying his football again more than Cesc Fabregas. In the first half of the season under Mourinho, his passing was so shocking his heat maps were given an 18 certificate. On Sunday he gave a masterclass that the babes in arms who made up City’s midfield would do well to watch on a loop.

Economic in movement and expansive in thought is the Spaniard’s mantra when on form, as he finds angles for passes as if carrying a protractor in his boot. Chelsea’s No. 4 was playing the game at his pace, while the other 21 players on the pitch tried to keep up.

In fairness to City, they caught Chelsea on a rare day when Pedro, Willian and Eden Hazard (albeit still with too many loose passes) were all in fine fettle at the same time. Each interchanged with fluidity as Fabregas, tucked in behind, found them at leisure. Midfield minder Jon Obi Mikel continued his renaissance with another assured performance as a human metronome.

At the point of Chelsea’s attack, the raging bull, Diego Costa, is another who seems to have benefited from Hiddink’s carrot methods, as opposed to Mourinho’s stick variety.

It was the Spain international that broke the deadlock with a header from no more than six yards, after Fabregas and Hazard had combined to carve open a City back four that insists on holding a high offside line on the edge of the penalty area.

Faupala’s equaliser just 94 seconds later, in the 37th minute, proved to be the highlight of City’s day. After the interval, the difference between the two sides was quantified in terms of goals.

Willian, Gary Cahill, Hazard and substitute Bertrand Traore all etched their names onto the scoresheet as Chelsea swept past their visitors with the ease of a bowling ball knocking down skittles.

As a bid to make up for previous errors, Willy Caballero’s penalty save from Oscar late on was right up there with the captain of the Titanic offering passengers a free drink on account of any inconvenience caused.

It wasn’t just City’s young players outclassed by their Chelsea counterparts. Far from it.

On a weekend in which Blackburn Rovers boss Paul Lambert chose to make five changes to his starting XI against West Ham United, resting three key players, despite the fact eight points cushion them from the relegation places in the Championship, it would seem a little churlish to accuse an injury-ravaged Manchester City of bringing the name of the FA Cup into disrepute.

Still, if you can’t be churlish on a miserable Monday morning in February when can you?

RIP the FA Cup.

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