No mess or mercy from rampant Gunners

Arsenal 4 Coventry 0

Arsenal may predictably be in the fifth round of the FA Cup after an easy 4-0 win, but the celebrated 1987 winners will lamentably remain a long way from home.

“Why?” the Coventry fans asked with an array of banners in the 31st minute, as the team continue to play home fixtures as far away as Northampton.

The struggles of Coventry over the past few years put Arsenal’s own complaints over an eight-season trophy drought into a certain context. To a degree, though, this very tie also reflected how far the Premier League leaders have come in the space of a season.

The last time Arsenal hosted a lower-league side in the FA Cup, after all, the entire Arsene Wenger era seemed to have reached a crushing and terminal nadir. Blackburn Rovers knocked them out of the 2012-13 fifth round and things had never really looked bleaker. The fact that 1-0 defeat so quickly followed a League Cup elimination to fourth-tier Bradford City means easy cup wins over the likes of Coventry such not be readily dismissed.

Arsenal have this season made a virtue of claiming victory in all the games they should. The potential for farcical calamity no longer afflicts this team.

That was emphasised by the very way in which they started this game. No messing about, no mercy.

Within nine minutes, Lukas Podolski had ended a storming attack by shooting just over. Within 15, he had finished with precision. Even more pleasingly for Arsenal, the opening goal was set up by his German international teammate Mesut Ozil.

The club record signing may have come in for some criticism lately but, in a game like this, he glided like he didn’t have a care in the world.

If that goal summed up the modern Arsenal, the second goal was a pointed throwback to the past. On 27 minutes, Per Mertesacker produced the kind of front-post back-header that assistant manager Steve Bould would have been proud of, to allow Podolski to nod home.

To their credit, Coventry did not lie down, as manager Steven Pressley proudly reflected upon after the match. On 50 minutes, Leon Clarke forced a save from Lukasz Fabianski before then hitting the post moments later.

If that was a spirited response, though, it was still nothing compared to the away fans. Towards the end of the match, a lone fan went onto the pitch to garner further attention for their protest, and it said much that the Emirates stewards did not rush to remove him.

Arsenal’s hospitality, however, only extended so far. On 85 minutes, Olivier Giroud came off the bench to slot the third and in stoppage time, fellow substitute Santi Cazorla added the fourth.

Before all that, highly-rated 16-year-old Gideon Zelalem came off the bench to become the first Arsenal player to be born after Wenger took charge. That brought a smile to the manager’s face, but so did questions about supposed target Julian Draxler.

Wenger described speculation about the Schalke player as an “illusion”. “There is nothing happening. There is no need to take a player on the flank.”

Such a signing, of course, would cut across Wenger’s intimations that the January window should be abolished. The French manager had offered that analysis in response to a question about Juan Mata, but Jose Mourinho said yesterday it was in his “nature” to “complain”.

Wenger refused to be drawn.

“It was nothing to do with Chelsea,” he said, “just a suggestion.

“I never speak about people. I speak about facts and about ideas, never about people.”

Wenger put himself above any slanging match. Coventry, by contrast, have far bigger issues.

ARSENAL: Fabianski 6; Jenkinson 7, Mertesacker 7, Koscielny 7, Gibbs 7; Wilshere 7, Oxlade-Chamberlain 7 (Zelalem 71), Gnabry 7, Ozil 7, Podolski 9 (Giroud 79); Bendtner 7 (Cazorla 71)

COVENTRY CITY: Joe Murphy 7; Christie 6, Webster 6, Seaborne 6, Adams 6; Baker 7, Thomas 6, Fleck 6, Daniels 6; Clarke 6, Moussa 6 (Clarke 88).

Referee: Robert Madley.