Arsenal’s season has been marked by too many false dawns, but Thomas Vermaelen believes the FA Cup victory over Aston Villa can help salvage the club’s faltering challenge for a place in the top four of the English Premier League.
Arsene Wenger’s side resume their league campaign away to Bolton Wanderers today in their first match since an astonishing Cup fightback against Villa.
Trailing 2-0 at halftime, the pressure on Wenger appeared certain to increase before three goals in eight second-half minutes, including two penalties from star striker Robin van Persie, set up a round-of-16 clash with either Sunderland or Middlesbrough.
Photo: EPA
Having not won silverware since they lifted the FA Cup in 2005, it was important the Gunners retained their interest in the competition, but their focus now switches back to the Premier League.
Arsenal’s chances of mounting a late challenge in the title race disappeared after a run of three successive defeats left them 18 points adrift of leaders Manchester City. The priority now is to reclaim a place in the top four — and with it entry to next season’s Champions League.
However, Wenger’s team lie fifth, five points behind fourth-placed Chelsea, who travel to Swansea City 24 hours before the action gets underway at Bolton’s Reebok Stadium.
Arsenal cannot afford to drop further behind and Vermaelen insists the manner of the victory over Villa will have an impact on their prospects for the rest of the season.
“It always gives you confidence if you get a good comeback win. Even the game itself gave us confidence because we played better than last weekend [a 2-1 loss to Manchester United].”
“When we had the ball we were better, we put our opponents under pressure and the result gives us even more confidence,” the Belgian defender added. “It is great for us. We have lost three games [in a row] in the league, so that is why it was good that we won [against Villa]. It gives us confidence for the next game, so we will fight hard on Wednesday and try to get the three points.”
Owen Coyle’s Bolton also secured a place in the FA Cup fifth round on the back of a home win over Swansea City.
More significant was the league victory against Liverpool the previous weekend that ensured the Trotters remained one point above the bottom three.
Ten points from their last six league games have helped revive Wanderers’ hopes of avoiding relegation after a dismal first half of the season and centerback Zat Knight insists there is a new belief within the squad.
“A few of the boys had been saying we haven’t beaten any of the top four in a while. It was a good occasion and a good performance against Liverpool,” Knight said. “The fixtures haven’t gone kindly for us. At the beginning of the season we had a tough run and we are in a tough run again now. We’ve got Arsenal, and then a few weeks later Manchester City and Chelsea. They are all starting to fight for the Champions League spots and the points are vital for them as well as they are for us.”
“We just have to stay focused,” he said. “We’re one point above the relegation zone at the moment, so we’re out of the bottom three and it’s the first time we’ve been out of it in a long time.”
“We have to stick to what we have been doing and not get ahead of ourselves,” Knight said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier