Happy Tuesday boys and girls. Let’s start with some FA Cup news, shall we? After all, we did learn last night our fate and opponents in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup and as I hoped for last in yesterday’s blog, we got the kind of draw that our compact fixture schedule could probably do with. It’s not a home game to Mansfield Town FC, but you have to take that as our next opponents, because you’d think that surely it leaves room for a fair bit of rotation, in between a really tough away trip to Brighton in the midweek before, followed by a Champions League Round of 16 game the midweek afterwards.

When you get to that part of the season you’re looking for ways in which you can involve the whole squad, so this opportunity will, I think, afford Mikel Arteta the chance to rest and rotate some of those key players who have been playing all the minutes. I think it also feels like some sort of football karma; we’ve had a fair few years of playing all Premier League opposition, so to be able to play teams with whom we rarely come up...