Farnborough were drawn at home, but decided to switch the gam to Highbury on Safety grounds (see Arsenal.com announcement). They will lose on on TV money, as Sky said they'd only choose the match as one of their live games if they kept it at Farnborough. But that will be more than made up for by their share of the increased gate receipts. In fact, Arsenal have said that they "will not earn any more from the game being played at Highbury than at Farnborough", and are even going to donate profits from programme sales to Boro.

Season ticket holders will automatically be allocated their seats for the match (all except Clock End ST holders using one of the vouchers from their books). This could be seen as controversial seeing as they are effectively forcing ST holders to buy tickets for what is officially an away match, but perhaps unsurprisingly, we've so far heard from only one fan who's unhappy with that. TRS and Family enclosure members will be able to buy tickets from Friday. See Arsenal.com for more.

Boro, currently 8th in the Nationwide Conference, earned their place in the hat with a 3-2 away win over 3rd division Darlington. They had a good run in the cup 11 years ago when West Ham grabbed a last-minute 3rd round equaliser at Upton Park, then edged a close replay. Anything but an Arsenal win this year would be probably the biggest cup upset ever. We all remember embarassing Arsenal losses (and Tony Adams keeps reminding us in the ads on telly!), but it's worth rememberign that Arsene Wenger's Arsenal have still not lost a cup tie to a lower division side.

See also Arsenal.com Farnborough info, official Farnborough site, unofficial Farnborough site/