Newsgroup: it.sport.calcio
Titolo: In semifinale....

3-0 e tutti a casa.
L'Arsenal, almeno in FA Cup, vola....

FA Cup quarter-finals: Prolific Frenchman maintains strike rate to
rouse Arsenal 
By Nick Townsend at Highbury 
Arsenal 3    Blackburn
Rovers 0 
Wiltord (2)
Adams (5)
Pires (36)
 
Half Time: 3-0
Attendance: 36,304 
11 March 2001 
Graeme Souness can now concentrate
on what he calls "the bigger picture". He alludes none-too-obliquely to
that canvas daubed liberally with images of the fabulous wealth of the
Premiership, one in which his club are again hob-nobbing with the
aristocracy, whose company they departed, awash with the late Jack Walker's
tears, in May, 1999. 
This will have hurt the Scot, but in the grand
design of progress at Ewood Park, probably not a lot. "I almost went home
at half-time to prepare for [their league game at Birmingham on]
Wednesday," was the Rovers manager's somewhat pointed reaction to this
reverse. "I'm not taking anything away from Arsenal, but my team selection
and substitutions were made with Wednesday in mind." Curiously, he then
proceeded to protest vehemently when asked about his team's commitment to
this tie. "People were assuming we were not trying to win," he said. "But
that's bollocks." Make of it what you will. 
Cynics would submit that
you could take your choice about which team would have been more upset to
have lost this tie: promotion-aspirants Blackburn or Arsenal, for whom the
Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, is a rather less compelling attraction than
Milan's San Siro, scene of this season's Champions' League final. Frankly,
Arsenal's pleasure at moving to within 90 minutes of an FA Cup final was no
more pronounced than their opponents' sense of regret. 
FA Cup exploits
have tended to become a proletarian preserve, as the major names have bowed
out with the words "thanks for the invitation" and thoughts more attuned to
European endeavour. Arsenal are in the semi-finals almost by default. Like
a piece of chewing gum stuck to their heel, the Cup just won't go away. Not
that they had to strive too hard here, anyway. Even the presence of the
redoubtable Souness, who managed Liverpool to an FA Cup final success in
1992, and Mark Hughes, that gnarled old oak of British football who boasts
an inextricable link to the famous trophy as the only man to secure four
winner's medals, failed to galvanise Rovers to anything approaching the
quality necessary to trouble Arsenal. 
His side a goal up after 75
seconds, and with an advantage of three after 35 minutes, the Arsenal
manager Arsčne Wenger was able to reflect later: "The tie lost a lot of
interest after the start we had. It never became a real cup game."
Rovers had the look of a team who &#8211; for all the potential of two men
with England ambitions, David Dunn and Matt Jansen &#8211; had spent rather
too long among lesser mortals. And Arsenal provide, at their fluid best,
just about the most exacting examination in England. In the opening scorer,
Sylvain Wiltord, that man who has now netted in all their four FA Cup ties
this season and scored six in the process, Arsenal possessed a wily
predator and one blessed with the ability to feed his team-mates readily,
too, as he did when Robert Pires completed the formalities with a third for
the Gunners before half-time. In between, the captain Tony Adams had scored
Arsenal's second. "He works very hard and is very mobile, very dangerous,"
Wenger said of Wiltord. 
The manager had enjoyed the luxury of
dispensing with the services of Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira until the
latter stages with Wednesday's journey to Bayern Munich for the crucial
fixture of their Champions' League season in mind. "I thought Patrick
needed a rest and Thierry had a slight problem with his foot," Wenger
explained. 
Blackburn, a Premiership team but clad in First Division
garb, had won their last four games, including Wednesday's 3-0 defeat of
Bolton in the delayed fifth-round game. Here they started without the guile
of Jansen, who was left on the bench. With Birmingham in mind, no doubt.
The tie began with the ferocity of a typhoon. After 30 seconds Jason
McAteer's cross was headed over narrowly by Marcus Bent. The gasps from the
travelling supporters, who believed that this may be a prelude to a
visionary display from their team, quickly turned to groans of dismay.
Forty-five seconds later, Arsenal's response was sheer Premiership class,
Lauren finding Pires on the right and the French winger's low cross being
dispatched with brutal precision into the corner of the net by Wiltord.
Bergkamp's delicate chip was then turned over by Brad Friedel, but it was
merely a delay of the inevitable. From Ashley Cole's right-wing corner,
Adams' header could hardly have been more facile. 
Souness's team were
not done with. Garry Flitcroft, operating just in front of the back three,
and the England Under-21 captain Dunn were architects of several promising
moves, but found their way expertly obstructed by an Adams-inspired
rearguard. Eyal Berkovic demanded a penalty &#8211; well, he would,
wouldn't he? &#8211; after going to ground in the area following the
attentions of Oleg Luzhny. 
Ten minutes before the interval, there was
another piece of precision engineering from the superlative Wiltord who got
his angles absolutely right with a pass to Pires, breaking into the area on
the right. The midfielder's cross-shot beat Friedel with consummate ease.
Souness introduced Stig-Inge Bjornebye and Damien Duff after the break for
Berkovic and Alan Mahon, and switched to a back four. Later, Hughes also
made way, as Jansen exhibited his skills. But it was not Rovers' day.
McAteer forced the ball into the net, but was adjudged, correctly, to have
used his hands in the process. Then Jansen bamboozled the Gunners defence
and slipped the ball to Dunn, but Seaman saved comfortably. Bent struck a
post in added time. 
But in the second half Arsenal were cruising,
although Wiltord was superbly denied by Friedel. So, the Gunners march on
towards Cardiff, not a name they would normally search for on their
football atlas. The question is, will they find it? More intriguingly, do
they want to?
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