Arsenal vs Cardiff City - Highbury, London - Saturday 7th January 2006

In this match report, everybody seems to be making much of Cardiff's fans, how well they all behaved, and how far away their behaviour was from their reputation as ace troublemakers.

I'd agree, they were very well behaved. If you ignore the fan in the North Bank that started waving a Welsh flag about, and whom it took 6 coppers and stewards to remove, as he flicked the Vs at the North Bank. Oh, and the Cardiff fan that ran onto the pitch from the East Stand, and shoved Manuel Almunia in the chest, before eventually being escorted away. And the fact that they behaved themselves and didn't run onto the pitch - or maybe that was more down to the sheer numbers of stewards and police at the front of their section, who were physically preventing them from getting onto the pitch. (Look how many people are preventing a pitch invasion from the away end here...)If you ignore all that, the Cardiff fans were very well behaved.

Of course, all these antics meant that, whilst probably not at their worst, they were still worse than any other fans that have been to Highbury this season. True, there were a lot of them, which adds to the potential for trouble. And true, they were very loud, and supported their team fantastically throughout the game. But it is a shame that they do seem to have such a large number of complete idiots - they fully deserve their reputation in my mind.

So to the actual football match. Cardiff could have scored within the first 30 seconds, which certainly gave everybody a wake up call. In reality though, this was an Arsenal "win the game early" effort, with a goal after 5 minutes, and another after about 15, to effectively end the game 1/3 of the way through the first half. Arsenal played out the rest of the first half, but then took their foot off the gas entirely for the whole second half.

Cardiff then did what Arsenal had been inviting them to do for much of the last 20 minutes, and scored with about 3 minutes to go, to set up a nailbiting finish. Nobody in the crowd really wanted to brave Ninian Park on a Tuesday night, so that's mainly why it was nailbiting! In injury time, Arsenal did the professional thing, and shut up shop to hold onto the victory. Into the fourth round, and lets hope either for a home tie, or an interesting away trip - Bolton, Wigan, Middlesbrough and Sunderland do not count!!