Winning the FA Cup would be massive for us, like stamping our foot on the brake to halt what's beginning to look like an inevitable slide into relative obscurity. But the players will have to do it on their own. They'll have to do it despite having the worst board in world sport leeching from the club, they'll have to do it despite the manager sticking to his stubborn and discredited policies, they'll have to do it in the face of a track record of abysmal choking and humiliation on the pitch. And they'll have to do it without any reinforcements because they tight-arsed, greedy filth in the boardroom are only interested in money-in and the messianic manager really thinks there's something to be gained by trying to change the world into something it doesn't want to be using Arsenal Football Club. In truth they'll probably have to do it without the fans too. Who here believes any more? Who here hasn't seen it all before? We'll cheer but we won't believe it until the Cup is actually delivered. Even if we are 2 goals up in the last minute, we won't believe it. And if we make the mistake of believing, that's when the worst will occur. Just to hit us in the face one more time. So we're asking the players to do something we are probably incapable of doing. Believe. Certainly something the board and the manager don't see as important because they seem to spend their whole time stamping down any sort of progress when it crawls to the surface.

So can we win the cup? Not a prayer. There's no hope because there's no belief. Just one fucking player of note signed in this transfer window. It could make all the difference. But certainly there's no hope of that.