Big Weekend: Arsenal v Man Utd, Accrington, Kinsky, Guardiola, Bayern Munich
It’s FA Cup third-round weekend, and it’s a lovely looking set of games as well, with an early clash for the competition’s two most successful clubs, a couple of David v Goliath games in the North West and non-league Tamworth welcoming whoever happen to currently be the 11 least injured Tottenham players.
Game to watch: Arsenal v Manchester United
Yeah, that’s right, we’re doing that exact same thing we always complain about the TV companies doing when selecting FA Cup third-round fixtures: ignoring all the interesting and unusual match-ups between teams who rarely play each other and just going straight for the big shiny thing.
But when we do it, it’s cute. And also: come on. This isn’t like when they pick a random drab common-or-garden all-Premier League tie that would shame the Super Sunday 2pm slot. This is the two most successful teams in the tournament’s history, both of whom hit this cup encounter at an interesting moment.
On the face of it, Arsenal are having another perfectly fine season. They are second in the Premier League, well placed for a top-eight Champions League finish, and reached the semi-finals of the Carabao. But it doesn’t really feel like they’re having a fine season, does it? It feels like one that’s riven with doubt and uncertainty, a sudden dread fear that Mikel Arteta’s excellent reign might not actually get them right back on top of the English game.
The Carabao already looks like an opportunity missed after a 2-0 home first-leg defeat to Newcastle in a game that couldn’t really have done much more to emphasise the advantages of having an elite number nine and the disadvantages of not having one.
We’re pretty sure Arsenal would be a happier place if everything else about this season were identical except for it being City rather than Liverpool who had streaked off into the distance at the top of the table. Were that the story, Arsenal would again be able to retreat below the comforting blanket of ‘impossible to compete with City’ and charges-based conspiracy theories. That Arsenal lost their way at the precise moment City cracked for the first time in five years has definitely proved far more rattling. Far harder to explain away not competing with Liverpool without partaking of some self-inspection. Probably just The Conspiracy, though.
And Liverpool are relevant here, because at this time last year they were to be found dispatching Arsenal from the FA Cup at the Emirates at this stage. It’s sh*tty luck to get another Big Six opponent – even at home – for a second year running, and again at a point in the season where Arsenal feel vulnerable.
But can United exploit that vulnerability? The whole idea that Arsenal are in any kind of trouble at all appears faintly ludicrous when put up against the utter, utter sh*tshow that has been (This Is) Manchester United Football Club (We’re Talking About) this season under first the doomed Erik Ten Hag and now the firefighting Ruben Amorim (it was quite good, to be fair, under the interim Ruud van Nistelrooy).
But United did rouse themselves from their season-long slumbers to land a blow on Liverpool last week and the sight of Arsenal should, if nothing else, again ensure United offer some kind of performance.
If pushed for a prediction you’d have to expect Arsenal, whose problems really are so small and tw*tty in comparison, to inflict further misery on United. But if nothing else at least these two grand old clubs can wallow together while comparing notes on their combined 27 wins in this competition (funny, by the way, that for all its history, the six most successful clubs in the FA Cup are the current Big Six and the eight most successful the current Big Eight despite Spurs not even bothering to reach a final for 34 and neither Villa nor Newcastle winning it since the 1950s) and bond over their mutual need for a Proper Striker.
Team to watch: Accrington
We’ve had a look at the age demographics for people who read this site, and let’s just say enough of you were around when it was good to have had the same response as us when the draw was made: that is, to have said “Who are they?” in a mock Liverpool accent that would embarrass Harry Enfield (who you also remember) at a pitch barely audible even to dogs. For full marks, you will also have gone to the trouble at this point of pouring yourself a glass of milk.
But this is Proper FA Cup, isn’t it? Accrington Stanley are no longer the forgotten punchline of the late 80s. A Northern Premier League Division One side when taking their place in pop-culture history, they have since risen back up the pyramid and have been a Football League club once more since 2006.
That’s looked slightly dicey in recent years, with relegation from League One followed by a 17th place finish in League Two last year and they currently sit 19th, five points clear of the drop and level on points with a Harrogate team who have their own evocative clash the other side of the Pennines this weekend against Leeds but without the backdrop of an advert from 36 years ago.
As always when you get these local clashes between clubs at very different places in the food chain, there are all manner of personal connections. The reaction of striker and boyhood Liverpool fan Josh Woods to the draw was an FA Cup moment every bit as potent as a cardboard cutout covered in foil or a local butcher preparing some special one-off sausages for the occasion while the obligatory ‘started his career in Liverpool’s academy’ box is also ticked off by midfielder Liam Coyle. Just a lovely thing all round.
And if Spurs can beat Liverpool then you know who else can? Exactly.
Player to watch: Antonin Kinsky and Spurs’ younglings
Always becomes the hardest section when FA Cup third-round weekend rolls around. We are getting our excuses in early, yes. But the reality is that for all the magic of the cup that exists in Liverpool-Accrington or Leeds-Harrogate and yes, Tamworth-Tottenham, it is also a weekend now that features high usage of phrases like ‘much-changed side’ and ‘shuffles his pack’ and if you’re a TV commentator trying desperately to put a positive spin on things managers ‘taking the chance to look at some of his fringe players here today’.
Best, then, to go – albeit still vaguely – with Spurs on the basis they no longer have fringe players, their injury crisis having long since restored even Sergio Reguilon to the status of key squad player and Djed Spence to integral starter.
Ange Postecoglou has no pack to shuffle. But Spurs’ crisis has also been an opportunity. Archie Gray has done absurdly well forced into emergency service at centre-back. It’s not how anyone planned his progression at Spurs, but the number of 18-year-olds that can look as composed as he does in their actual position is vanishingly small. The ones who can do so out of position during a cartoonish crisis for a cartoonish club are true unicorns.
Fellow new arrival Lucas Bergvall has found things slightly harder despite the advantage of being allowed to play in his actual position, but had a breakthrough performance capped by a winning goal against Liverpool.
New Sack Race favourite Ange Postecoglou spoke glowingly of the pair after that Carabao game, expressing the hope that he gets to see them at their peak. Certainly if Bergvall, Gray and Pape Sarr are all still at Spurs in three years’ time then the manager who replaces the manager who replaced Postecoglou should have one heck of a midfield at his disposal.
And then there’s the 21-year-old goalkeeping sensation Antonin Kinsky, the new darling of the Lane after his startling debut.
Spurs fans’ anger at the way this season has transpired have largely and not unreasonably been aimed at those above Ange controlling the purse strings. But credit must go to Spurs, because they recognised their need for a new goalkeeper more suited to the style of play required than Fraser Forster and while it remains incredibly early days they do appear on initial evidence to have solved that problem with distinctly un-Spurslike alacrity and precision.
Forster remains a perfectly capable shot-stopper of the old school, but entirely uncomfortable with the ball at his feet and with neither the confidence, speed nor inclination to sweep up behind a high line. The impact that has on Spurs was evident in the Liverpool game, where the presence of a far more Guglielmo Vicario-adjacent modern keeper transformed the entire shape and poise of the Spurs team.
Vicario is not the best player Spurs have been without for long spells this season – indeed, he may now face a real fight just to reclaim his place in the side when he does recover from serious injury – but might just be the most important.
And now Kinsky himself may have already become too important after just one game to risk in an FA Cup trip to Tamworth given it’s Arsenal up next for Ange’s bare-bones brigade.
Manager to watch: Pep Guardiola
West Ham and Everton having their FA Cup games before the cruelly tight definition of weekend to which Big Weekend works – despite the name, it is actually a very small weekend comprising only of Saturday and Sunday – removes the most interesting options straight away here, but how about a bit of good news for the resurgent Pep Guardiola, eh?
He has the chance to London Bus his way to three straight wins in yet another local derby against Salford after all that unpleasantness. Crisis, what crisis?
Football League game to watch: Rotherham v Bolton
A much reduced Football League programme, of course, but that does provide those clubs who are in action with the opportunity to make significant moves. Bolton can close within a point of the top six with victory at Rotherham, who for their part will be looking to extend their own three-game unbeaten run and put further distance between themselves and the unwelcome prospect of back-to-back relegations.
European game to watch: Borussia Monchengladbach v Bayern Munich
Bayern return from the winter break looking to take another significant step towards reclaiming the Bundesliga title they so unexpectedly relinquished last season with a trip to a Gladbach side on the fringes of the European picture. For the hosts it may have been a classic case of a break coming at the wrong time; their last two games before Christmas represented their first back-to-back wins of the Bundesliga season, against Holstein Kiel and Hoffenheim.
