Morning all.

Greg Dyke, Chairman of the FA has had this to say about the lack of young English players in the top league:

It comes down to two basic arguments, the Arsene Wenger argument which says your boys are just not good enough and the other says they are, but there’s a blockage.

There clearly is a blockage at certain clubs of getting young boys enough experience to get into the best leagues in the world.

I think we are the last club he should be citing for young players not getting their chance. Ok sometimes one or two in our squad could play more often but that’s a different matter all together. Also,Β he’d have been a lot more wise not to single out Arsene Wenger when right across the Premier League, there are many clubs who aren’t fielding many English players. Added to that, we have many younger English players coming through our Academy, can many other clubs boast the same?

I doubt it and in my opinion this just proves that when the FA get a sniff at the chance to take a swipe at Wenger and the club they do. Just like they send out weak and totally inept referees to most of our matches, especially when it’s a tough game and a tough impartial referee is required.

Anyway, it’s FA Cup day, 12.45 ko against Everton at The Emirates and Mark Clattenburg is the man in charge of the whistle.

Antolin Alcaraz could return for the visitors but Phil Jagielka could remain on the sidelines with a hamstring injury.Β Joel Robles is expected to continue in goal as he has done throughout the FA Cup and Lukaku will no doubt start having recovered from injury.

Lacina Traore, Bryan Oviedo, Darron Gibson and Arouna Kone all remain sidelined for theΒ visitors.

We have a long list of injuries ourselves, Walcott, Ramsey, Kallstrom, Diaby, Wilshere, Monreal and possibly Koscielny.

Everton played an amazing game against us at the Emirates. We have to play them again in the FA Cup and we know it won’t be an easy.

We’re talking about Everton but we could easily to talk about every team in England. That’s part of the English game. When you want to win a game you have to first of all win the challenge and win the battle in the midfield.

But if you don’t manage to put your team on the same level or an even higher level in terms of intensity, in terms of [the] physical aspect than the other team, you have no chance to play your game.

Mathieu Flamini is of course referring to the league fixture we played out with Everton earlier in this season.

Everton came to us and started more like they were the home side and to be honest, we did very well to hold on so long without conceding a goal. Ross Barkley was causing plenty of problems, as was Lukaku up front but were having one of those ‘off days’. No matter how many goal scoring opportunities we created, that darn ball wouldn’t go into the back of the net.

Ozil finally broke the deadlock on the Β day with under ten minutes left in the game after a super ball was played to the back post by Tomas Rosicky, Theo Walcott headed the ball back across the area, Giroud totally fluffed the chance but thankfully, Ozil was lurking right behind him to smash the ball home. We had chances to increase our lead but failed to take them.

Deulofeu came on and broke our footballing hearts by grabbing an equaliser….

Today we need to start a lot more lively than we did back then, we are at home, we need to play like the home side and not let Everton get an early rhythm to their game. Close them down if we don’t have the ball and force the errors, the misplaced passes and take advantage on any given opportunity.

We must get that early control, play with a lot more urgency than we have done of late and when we get chances, take them.

This is a huge game for all sorts of reasons, the main one being we want to progress and get to Wembley. We need to win to get some confidence back and of course we need a great performance from every player who has the privilege to be playing for our club…

Every player needs be in the right frame of mind, put in the right level of commitment, passion and desire because only that will win the day…..

We have witnessed moments of all of the above at times during this season, many times but not enough.

Arsene Wenger and and many of the players talk the talk, today it’s time to walk the walk!!

COYRRG’s….