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Half time: Bournemouth 0-2 Arsenal
45+3 mins: Bournemouth demonstrated in the closing stages of the half that this could have been an exciting and closely-contested Cup tie, had they not conceded twice and played like a gang of absolute pranksters for the best part of 40 minutes beforehand.
45+1 mins: There’ll be a couple of minutes of stoppage time. They start with Harry Wilson becoming the night’s first cautionee, after bringing Nketiah down from behind.
45 mins: Bournemouth have had an encouraging five minutes. It’s a shame that the scoreline is so discouraging already, but still. They win a corner, but waste it miserably.
44 mins: Xhaka gives the ball away to Fraser, who exchanges passes with Solanke, jinks his way to the edge of the area and then slices a shot hopelessly wide.
41 mins: Bournemouth have woken up! Fraser passes to the overlapping Simpson, whose pull-back is booted clear by Xhaka.
39 mins: Another Bournemouth shot! This time Wilson (H) crosses from the right and Gosling meets it, though unfortunately he meets it with his shoulder and the ball loops over the bar.
38 mins: Shot! By Bournemouth! Fraser’s cross from the left flicks off a head to Harry Wilson, beyond the far post, whose volley towards the near post is saved by Emiliano Martinez.
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35 mins: Simpson does well to stop Nketiah reaching Guendouzi’s through-ball. “Arsenal’s search to replace Mustafi is over,” trills Charles Antaki. “There’s a chap on the field, also called Mustafi, who seems to be a reincarnation of Franco Baresi and Franz Beckenbauer. Sign him up, Mikel!”
33 mins: Pepe distracts every defender in the neighbourhood and then passes to Bellerin, now alone on the right, who has time to measure his cross but Cook wins the battle to put a head on it.
31 mins: Martinelli speeds past Cook on the Arsenal left, gets to the byline and squares for Nketiah, but Ake flings out a foot to deny the visitors a potential third.
29 mins: Shot! Pepe saunters past a few defenders on the right, cuts in, and shoots wide of the near post.
28 mins: This is the worst of VAR, taking an age to make a decision they didn’t even have to make, before deciding that they needn’t have bothered.
27 mins: There is a VAR check in progress, on a possible offside. Though they seem to be checking Martinelli, who didn’t even nearly touch the ball.
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GOAL! Bournemouth 0-2 Arsenal (Nketiah, 26 mins)
And Arsenal take a two-goal lead! The last few miutes have been humiliating for Bournemouth. Again Saka is crucial, collecting Willock’s pass and sending in a low cross that goes behind Martinelli but is turned in by Nketiah!
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26 mins: Some of Bournemouth’s interplay, their closing down and their defensive shape could have come straight from a how-not-to-play-football instructional video.
24 mins: Arsenal pass the ball around the defence for a while, lulling Bournemouth into a stupor, and then Mustafi smacks a 60-yard pass to Sako, who has gone completely unnoticed on the left, and the Gunners suddenly have a promising attacking situation. Sako’s cross hits a defender, though, and the visitors end with nothing more than a throw-in.
22 mins: Martinelli hopelessly miscues a 30-yarder, which flies high and wide. Arsenal are completely dominant.
20 mins: Save! Bellerin passes infield to Willock, who turns Gosling, nudges the ball past Ake and has a shot from an acute angle that Travers blocks. The ball rebounds back off Willock and into the middle of the six-yard box, but to a defender rather than a forward.
19 mins: Nice work down the left by Arsenal involving Martinelli, Saka and Xhaka, but it ends with a poor, looping cross from Saka, and that’s the end of the attack.
15 mins: Guendouzi fouls Fraser, giving Bournemouth another free-kick. Those are two not very dangerous but extremely sloppy fouls from the Frenchman. Perhaps he’s still a bit dazed after that face-hitting business.
14 mins: Bournemouth win a throw-in on the left, even though Pepe very clearly stopped the whole ball crossing the whole line. I do feel that linesmen are very often overkeen on awarding throw-ins like this. Ho hum.
12 mins: Guendouzi, back on his feet if still a little puce of face, brings Gozling down on the edge of the centre circle, but the free-kick doesn’t threaten the Arsenal defence.
10 mins: The ball hits Guendouzi inside Arsenal’s penalty area and he goes down clutching his face. This is a near-certain sign that it not only hit his arm but also that he knew all about it, however replays show the ball did indeed hit him in the nose.
9 mins: A fine goal, this. You might expect the goalkeeper to save a shot from this angle, but it was an exceptionally vicious one, so we’ll give him a pass.
GOAL! Bournemouth 0-1 Arsenal (Saka, 5 mins)
The first decent attack ends in a goal! Joe Willock is the inspiration, turning nicely away from Gosling on the halfway line. He runs to the edge of the area before passing to Martinelli on his left, who passes to Saka on his left, who lashes a rising shot past Mark Travers from an acute angle!
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1 min: Peeeeeeep! The whistle blows and Arsenal, in their Bruised Banana away kit, get the game started.
Eddie Howe has a chat. Callum Wilson has had an injection in his knee, and Howe wanted to protect the players that aren’t 100% fit today”, hence him being on the bench rather than on the pitch:
It’s an important competition for us. It’s our next game. We won our last game, we want to try to build on that momentum and we’d love to be in the next round. I think it’s going to be really good game. We’ve done well here under lights in recent games, so let’s hope that continues.
The draw has been concluded, and the winners from this tie will be away to Portsmouth in the fifth round.
This just in from Bournemouth’s changing room. Brooklyn Genesini is on the bench, and in line to make his first senior appearance today. He’s an 18-year-old full-back.
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The teams!
Here are the teams again in totally plain text form:
Bournemouth: Travers, Smith, S Cook, Ake, Simpson, L Cook, Surman, Gosling, H Wilson, Fraser, Solanke. Subs: Ramsdale, Francis, C Wilson, Billing, Surridge, Dobre, Genesini.
Arsenal: Martinez, Bellerin, Mustafi, Sokratis, Saka, Guendouzi, Xhaka, Pepe, Willock, Martinelli, Nketiah. Subs: Leno, Ceballos, Lacazette, Ozil, Torreira, Maitland-Niles, Holding.
Referee: Martin Atkinson.
Hello world!
History in the making. That’s what we’re about to witness. For this, ladies and gentlemen, is the very first FA Cup tie between Bournemouth and Arsenal. The Cherries are looking to reach round five for the fifth time in their history (they’ve have reached the sixth round once, in 1957, and never got any further), Arsenal for the first time in three years (though they got at least that far in all but three of the preceding 17 years, in which time they reached seven finals and won six). There is, as you will have noticed, a massive disparity in Cup-flavoured achievement between these clubs, and for all their problems this season Arsenal remain eight places above their relegation-haunted opponents, but Bournemouth have home advantage and Ye Old Magic of the Cup to call upon, so anything is possible.
For Arsenal, Exciting Youngster Gabriel Martinelli is likely to start – “We have to bring him down,” said Mikel Arteta, which as it happens is precisely the thought that ran through David Luiz’s head when Tammy Abraham looked like scoring for Chelsea last week, which is why he’s suspended for this one. Bournemouth fielded a more than decent team in their third-round match against Luton, and we can thus expect similar this time even if Eddie Howe suggested he would rest the “players playing with injuries that ideally if we had a full squad to pick from wouldn’t be playing”, without suggesting who these players were.
Anyway, and to conclude, I’m hoping for a rollicking Cup tie. Welcome all!
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