Terrace Talk: More conviction in Alexis Sanchez’s half-time warm-up than Arsenal's combined first-half effort

I never fail to be amazed by our seemingly infinite capacity to sell ourselves the starry-eyed promise of a different Arsenal narrative, but such is the masochistic curse of the travelling Gooner, writes Bernard Azulay.

Otherwise, if we actually resigned ourselves to being stuck in this eternal cycle of unfulfillment, there’d be nothing to persuade me to drag my aching bones out of my pit on a Saturday morning, to make the 350-mile round trip schlep to the north-west.

After having stepped back in time, for our cup outing to the surreal, but refreshingly civilized non-league surroundings of Gander Green Lane, where one can still smoke in the stands, queue up for a cuppa while keeping one eye on the match and even pop out to the pub for a half-time pint, the postponement of last weekend’s outing to Southampton (not to mention Spurs’ emphatic trouncing of the Potters) ensured that we were all impatiently slavering in anticipation of Saturday’s trip to the opposite end of the footballing spectrum.