Yesterday I went through my preferred draw for the FA Cup, from the most favoured, through to the least favoured, which unsurprisingly had Port Vale at the top, City at the bottom. Southampton were in second and, as a team who are currently in eighth in the Championship and currently fighting for a play-off space, I think as an Arsenal fan you have to say “I’ll take that”.

It won’t be easy, of course, but when you think about the balance of probabilities, it’s a more favourable tie. As I went for my run yesterday, I was thinking about this: there are seven sides we could have been drawn against. That means 14 permutations (seven home, seven away). If I think about what would be the topfour or five permutations, it would have been Port Vale at home, then Port Vale away, then Southampton at home, then Southampton away. We got the fourth-best option out of 14 options, so that’s pretty good.

Of course, as is the way this season, the narratives already started to drop, with an article on Sky that I read last night saying that we haven’t played a Premier League side so far in the FA Cup. Of course, nobody is mentioning that neither have Chelsea, and they got the best possible draw to get into the semi-finals with their home tie to Port Vale. But there you go. They aren’t the story so far this season, we are.

Still, it could have been worse. We could have got the draw that City got – Liverpool, albeit at home for them. But that represents a really tough match-up that Pep is not exactly going to be able to rest players for. Liverpool will be looking at this as a competition in which they can win a trophy, despite a difficult season, so they will go strong. City will need to match that, which means their April is suddenly looking like quite the douzy of a month. They play Liverpool in the FA Cup, the Champions League quarter final probably against Bayern, Chelsea away (who will no doubt have rotated for Port Vale at home) in the Premier League, then the second leg of their quarter final in the Champions League, before they play us. Their last game is away to Burnley, which is the banker for them.

Now, none of us should be counting our chickens, of course, but our games at least on paper don’t look as scary. We have Southampton away, then the quarter final if we can overcome Leverkusen to either Sporting or Bodo/Glimt, before playing Bournemouth at home in the Premier League, then it’s the second leg of that Sporting/Bodo quarter final at home (again, if we make it), before we play them. Our last game is a tricky one at home to a Newcastle side that I am really hoping will have nothing to play for, but equally will give us a tough match-up.

Once again, we have to put a big asterisk against all of these matches, but you’d rather have our run of games than theirs. It means April may well turn out to be a pivotal one in the season; I really hope we rise to the occasion in our games, with City hopefully dropping points and not being knocked out. For example, I kind of want to see City win their games against Real Madrid. We want them to be playing quarter finals just before they play us in the League. If they’ve been knocked out to Real Madrid, they have a week off before they play us, whilst we’ll have played a home match if we beat Leverkusen. That’s the kind of marginal gain that could have a big swing in a match like that at the Emptihad.

But we still have to respect and do our jobs against Leverkusen. Arteta will be up in front of the press today to talk about that game, but tomorrow evening’s early kick-off is one that we will have to see Arsenal step up against a patchy Leverkusen side this season. Their last five matches in all competitions have been:

  1. 3-3 draw away to Freiburg
  2. 1-0 win away to Hamburg
  3. 1-1 draw at home to Mainz
  4. 0-0 home draw against Olympiacos
  5. 1-0 defeat to Union Berlin

Like I say – patchy.

They still have players who can hurt us in the shape of Schick and Grimaldo, but I think the Czech centre-forward is currently injured for this one, so that might be a big advantage for us. That means they’ll likely turn to the pacey Christian Kofane as their attacking outlet, who has seven goals to his name this season, and I suspect the Cameroonian will make life difficult for our centre halves tomorrow night. They’re also missing Loic Bade, Arthur, Flekken and Lucas Vasquez – the latter being at Real Madrid last season and sucking on some sour grapes after the game by saying we did “almost nothing” in the game at the Bernabeu. It would have been nice to see if Martinelli can skin him again tomorrow night, but I guess it just isn’t meant to be.

For us, all eyes will be on those players who were rested from the weekend, plus whether Trossard and Calafiori’s knocks are longer-term than just a precaution, although I suspect we won’t really know, given how much we know Arteta likes to tell us almost nothing in his press conferences. Despite that, though, I am still hoping that he at least confirms that the two that came off at the weekend are fine for Everton on Saturday. We may not need them for tonight, but we do need to start rotating this team and not over-relying on players, given how quickly the matches are coming right now.

We’ll find out more later, I’m gutted I couldn’t get a ticket as I’d have flown over tonight, but let’s hope that The Arsenal are in good shapes for this one, because keeping the impossible dream alive of a quadruple would be mighty nice with a win tomorrow. I’ll catch you then, when we have a look at how we might line up.