Eight quarter final appearances in succession will mean little unless we pick up the trophy.
A frantic start to proceedings saw us open up Newcastle with incredible ease, Carlos Vela was guilty of missing the easiest opportunity but Newcastle were also culpable of wasting chances with their lone striker, Ranger, who excelled in the 4-3 win at Chelsea, firstly declining to accept Szczeny's offer to go down under an enthusiastic challenge in the area and then taking too long to steady himself to finish the resulting chance, allowing the impressive Laurent Koscielny the opportunity to close him down.
Soon after, Alan Smith's crashing drive was tipped on to the bar by Sczezny but the pendulum almost immediately found the centre ground for the rest of the first half as both teams' sense of adventure was reigned in by the shocking ease with which their opposition had opened them up.
One final moment of lunacy did lead to the deadlock being broken before the half time whistle though. A Walcott corner to the back post was headed back into the danger zone and Bendtner's header on goal was fumbled by Krul, then headed off the line on to the back of Krul’s head, rebounding back into the goal. It was a clumsy opener but it meant the rest of the game played into our hands.
A controversial Theo Walcott goal doubled our lead shortly into the second half. A long ball was clipped forward and Walcott, who may have been marginally offside, raced in behind their back four and expertly lifted the ball over Krul. However, that was not the whole story as Bendtner, who had been ambling back from an offside position, cut across a defender’s path to stop him attempting to close down Walcott. He had no chance of catching Theo but it was a blatant body check that the referee appeared to be oblivious to.
Two goals down and Chris Hughton felt he had to throw on the twin power houses of Andy Caroll and Jonas Gutierrez but, despite their energy, neither could change the momentum of the cup tie. Arsene Wenger emphasised the gulf in class by subbing on Cesc Fabregas at the same time as Joey Barton and the Spaniard wasted little time in setting up our third.
He intercepted a poor throw-in to play Bendtner through, allowing him to cut in from the left to slam a stunning finish into the top corner. Newcastle were now wide open at the back and Walcott profited again, capitalising on hesitation in the Newcastle defence to fly away and slam the ball past the keeper. Such clinical finishing on return from a long injury lay off is brilliant news and his quick return to form more than overshadows yet another injury picked up in the first half by Kieran ‘van Persie’ Gibbs.
After fifteen consecutive failures to keep a clean sheet away from the grove, we have now kept two in a row and two important wins have inevitably followed. We have averaged over three goals a game this season and yet are not top of the league and that is entirely down to our inconsistent defending. The irony is that we have still been far from defensively sound in the last two games.
Both Lukasz Fabianski and Sczezny have made some very impressive saves and have highlighted the importance that an in-form goalkeeper can play at the top but the defensive frailty that has required them to impress is a big concern. Yet again we are on the verge of being the best team in the land but defensive naivety continues to threaten all of the brilliant work by Wenger and his team.