Ooh that was close. Arsenal played a reserve team as expected, in that there were no players from Sunday's starting line-up against Charlton. But there were a few first-teamers in there.

           Graham Stack
Justin Hoyte (John Spicer)          Gael Clichy
       Stathis Tavlaridis    Pascal Cygan
Cesc Fabregas (Quincy Owusu-Abeyie 85)    Sylvain Wiltord
             Edu        Jerome Thomas (Ryan Smith 74)    
         Kanu        Aliadiere

Arsenal opened the scoring just after 10 minutes into the game. Edu passed to Clichy on the left, just inside our half, and he hit a beautiful long low pass forward to Wiltord on the edge of the Rotherham box. Sylvain received with back to goal, and turned neatly past 2 defenders before making for the goal line then slipping it back to Kanu. The Nigerian's simple but effective first touch laid it on for Aliadiere to knock into the net. Nice passing, nice movement, nice touches, nice turn, and particularly nice to see 2 strikers in the box and one on its edge, when we had the ball on the halfway line.

A minute from time the visitors equalised from a decent enough cross, when Byfield was left unmarked to power a standing header past Graham Stack.

Their keeper was sent off soon into extra time, for handling outside the box. He was rushing out to stop a clear chance from a long ball forward, and reached up with his left hand. Bizarrely, he appealed to the ref that he had in fact headed the ball. Not used to playing in front of cameras? Rotherham aren't exactly a pub league team are they? I imagine he'll be pretty embarassed when he sees the replays, it could hardly have been more blatant.

I have to say that the automatic red card for handling outside the box can be absurdly harsh. But not in this case, he prevented an almost certain Arsenal winner as Owusu-Abeyie's chip was heading for goal.

Instead, it went to penalties and, unusually,the penalties went all the way round the team. Graham Stack made the telling contribution when he scored his, then saved the next one of theirs. Sylvain Wiltord, who had missed the first Arsenal pen in the shootout, stepped up to take the next and win it 9-8.

Interesting that Stack took a pen. My understanding was that when one team was depleted the other team gets to leave players out of the shoot-out, to even up the numbers so that the team who had a player red-carded don't get an advantage (otherwise, they would get back to their first-choice penalty taker first). So, if Stack didn't sit it out, who did...? (see below for answer)

Also of note was the debut of much-hyped (by me) Spanish starlet Cesc Fabregas. At 16 years 117 days he has beaten Jermaine Pennant's 4 year old record, becoming the youngest player ever to represent Arsenal in a first-team game.

Rupe adds...
Thansk to everyoen who wrote in to let us know that it was Tavlaridis who was taken out of the centre circle at penalty shoot-out time, to even up the numbers.

Marc C adds that Owusu-Abeyie looked pretty good for the brief spell he was on the pitch, and Ryan Smith also impressed after coming off the bench. But Kanu and Wiltord didn't look particularly interested (goal assists aside), in contrast to Cygan who seems to be taking his demotion in the right spirit.

He adds, and we agree, that it's a shame David Bentley was injured for this one. Hopefully we'll get a look at him in the next round.

Anyone care to comment on Cesc? He seems to have enjoyed it.