Arsenal vs Newcastle United - Emirates Stadium, London - Tuesday 25th September 2007

The first Carling Cup game of the season, after last year's run to the final, and we were pretty unlucky to draw yet another Premiership team in Newcastle United. Last season as well, we draw Premiership teams most of the time, in both domestic cups - it would be good to play a real minnow for a change. Also, with Newcastle not in Europe this year, and unlikely to make the top 4, the Carling Cup could well be their best shot at European qualification - so they were likely to be fielding a decent team, and trying hard. Hopefully, our kids would be up to the task.

Tickets for this game were reduced to a tenner in the lower tiers, and £20 upstairs, mindful of the fact that this was probably the least attractive first team game at the Emirates Stadium so far. The one previous Carling Cup game there was a semi final against Spurs, which doesn't really compare! But, again underlining the huge gap in support between Arsenal and Chelsea, all 60,000 tickets were sold out with a week to go before the game.

Speaking of Chelsea (again), Arsenal's financial results were released the day before the game, giving us comfortably the biggest revenues of any football club in England, and second only to Real Madrid in the world (and that will change next year, now that Beckham has left). At the press event to announce the finances, Peter Hill-Wood seemed to acquire Tourettes syndrome, and said that they would never dominate football. Other columnists seem to have also caught onto the idea that Chelsea are no bigger a club than West Ham. What a shame that the Chelsea backlash seems to have begun, in a huge way!

I was sat in a different seat for this game, dead centre behind the north goal, so I had a very different perspective of the game. I don't think I preferred this position, the Upper Tier roof was right above me, which made it feel much more cramped than my usual seat. The fact that the stadium was full of lots of irregular attendees, and had people trying out sitting in different places, also didn't help the atmosphere much, especially to begin with. Also, of course, London Underground didn't help either - horrendous delays on the Piccadilly Line meaning that the stadium still had around 15,000 empty seats at kick off.

The starting line up was much changed from Saturday's win over Derby - but was still made up of full Arsenal squad players. These are young squad players, hence the label "kids", but many are full internationals, and they would do pretty well themselves over a full Premiership season. Eduardo is top scorer in England's European Championship group, Senderos played in the 2006 World Cup, Walcott went to the World Cup but didn't play, Bendtner is a Danish international who scored their winner against Germany earlier this season - and Hoyte, Eboue, Denilson and Diarra may all be young, but they are hardly unknowns. So, whilst games like this do showcase the wealth of exciting young players that Arsenal have (nobody that played tonight was over 24), it is hardly like fielding a side that have never played football before - many of this side will make significant first-team contibutions this season.

That said, there was a distinct gap in class between Arsenal and Newcastle, and this was the strongest available team from a club that are currently fifth in the Premier League. The first half was pretty dull (understandable from an Arsenal point of view, as the team on display are not exactly used to playing with each other). But in the second half, Arsenal gradually began to assert their authority. Lassana Diarra had a truly fantastic game in his first start for the club, popping up everywhere, and really reminding me of a Makelele-type player, who just keeps the whole side ticking along. This hard work left Denilson to show his obvious quality, and leading many around me to call him the "new Fabregas".

The goals came late in the game, Bendtner with a great header from a pinpoint cross, which was a well-deserved reward for his hard work all evening. Then, after a scare when Senderos made a last-ditch clearance off the line from Martins, Denilson put the icing on the cake, with a screamer of a 20-yard shot into the top corner. That's one thing about this Arsenal team (both first team and second string) at the moment - not only are we playing incredibly good football, but the goals we are scoring are plentiful and in many cases quite brilliant. It is probably not unfair to say that Arsenal could well be the best football team in the world right now. But as we all know, no trophies are being given out for being good "right now".

I'm hoping for a slightly easier draw in the next round, avoiding any of the Big 4 sides, and hopefully we will be able to win this trophy this time, to really give the history makers something to remember this great young side by. The DJ in the stadium played Teenage Kicks at the final whistle, a cool song to round off a(nother) very encouraging evening.