By Myles Palmer
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West Brom 0 Arsenal 2
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Kanu 25, Aliadiere 57
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ARSENAL’S defence won the Blackburn game 1-0, but they needed loads of luck to reach the Carling Cup semi last night.
Arsene used a mixture of kids and his first team bench.
And he kept his amazing record of never having lost to opponents from a lower division in 23 games over seven years.
Star men included keeper Graham Stack, who was bold and solid, Clichy at left back, and Aliadiere, who scored again.
EDU knew who was behind him, who was in front of him, who was left and right.
He was canny, strategic, inventive, reliable, the hub of the team.
When the game started West Brom were more coherent and their offside trap caught out Wiltord, who did not want to be out there.
We had that in common. I did not want him to be there either.
Keown hugged Dobie in the box and got away with it.
West Brom also scored with a header. It was disallowed, wrongly, for offside.
Then Kanu headed a cross straight at Hoult, and knocked in the rebound from two yards.
So Arsenal went 1-0 up after 25 minutes.
After 30, Keown clattered Andy Johnson in the box, a clear penalty.
Quite amazing that no penalty was given.
Hoult boobed when clearing a backpass, allowing Aliadiere to intercept and make it 2-0.
The semi-final draw is on Wednesday night.
Will Chelsea win at Aston Villa and provide an all-London semi?
ON SUNDAY, BLACKBURN made a game of it, as I expected.
They dominated the first 11 minutes and Dwight Yorke almost scored after 20 seconds.
Kolo Toure made a phenomenal break on the right to set up Bergkamp for a goal which was totally against the run of play.
Arsenal had eight good players on Sunday – Vieira,Gilberto and Henry were poor.
HENRY was either unfit or thinking about the FIFA World Player of 2003 award, which he did not get.
He was a passenger on Sunday.
You have to wonder whether Arsenal can win at Bolton with PV,TH and GS playing like this.
Henry can’t be that bad twice in a row.
The good news was that Cygan did not put a foot wrong. His passing was excellent.
Pires continues to play really well.
Lehmann held everything, as he did against Lokomotiv.
He has the respect of the team, you can tell that.
Freddie had a great first 30 and put a fantastic cross on the head of Pires, who nodded straight to Friedel
Gilberto has no confidence at all at the moment.
He had a nightmare, starting shakily and then crumbling.
Overall, Blackburn played well until the goal, then Arsenal played well, and then in the second half Blackburn were the better side but could not produce a telling shot.
Arsenal’s back five were superb and earned a narrow win which restored them to the top of the table on a day when Chelsea lost 2-1 at home to Bolton.
MUTU and Crespo were too busy showboating and Chelsea should have been 4-0 up at half time.
Ranieri called it right when he said his men panicked and started dribbling too much instead of passing and playing normally.
BOLTON love beating the big boys and this was a big scalp for Sam Allardyce, who is flavour of the month in the media right now.
The 2-2 game at Bolton last season was the moment when the title slipped away, after brutal tackling crippled two of the three Arsenal players who had to go off in a ten minute spell.
We have been told that Big Sam and Sir Alex played golf together two days before the Bolton-Arsenal game.
I wonder what they talked about?
Saturday will be a good test.
I would start Edu.
As you know, Djorkaeff used to play for Arsene at Monaco.
16th December 2003