8 is the number of seasons without a trophy Arsenal are headed towards following their 2nd shock cup exit in the past couple of months, as they lost to Blackburn Rovers 1-0 at the Emirates in their FA Cup 5th round tie. The Gunners’ only chance of a trophy lies in the Champions League and not many people seem to fancy our chances in that competition plus we will do well to finish 4th in the Barclays Premier League this season.

2 is the number of times the Gunners have felt the humiliation of losing to lower league opposition in the domestic cup competitions this season. Arsenal lost to League One’s Bradford City in December, suffering the pain of being knocked out 3-2 on penalties after Thomas Vermaelen had given them a second chance with an 87th minute headed equalizer.

0 is the number of goals they scored against Blackburn as they could not even find the back of the net once and were beaten by on loan Galatasaray player, Colin Kazim-Richards’ late strike. Wenger’s policy of resting key players for matches against lower-tier teams has got to stop especially when staying in these competitions is so important given our near 8 seasons without silverware.

7 is the number of changes Wenger made for the Blackburn match resting key players like Walcott, Cazorla and Jack Wilshere from the line-up that faced Sunderland in the Gunners’ previous match. Ironically, it was just after Wenger introduced these players as late substitutes that Blackburn went forward and scored what turned out to be the winner. Would Alex Ferguson have fielded a weakened team against Rovers in what was really a must-win game for Arsenal? I seriously doubt it. You could argue that Man United have a deeper squad so they don’t have to worry about resting or rotating so much but whose fault is that? The buck has to stop with Arsene since he is the one putting the squad together.

28 is the number of games in the streak of straight FA Cup wins the Gunners had been on when playing against lower league opposition in the competition. Please note: I am not talking about the League Cup here, just the FA Cup. It was a serious shock to just about everyone that this streak was broken in fact I did not hear of any pundit even mentioning the possibility of there being any result other than an Arsenal win.

10 is the number of times the Gunners have won the FA Cup. Unfortunately this number will not be increasing for at least another 15 months when the final of next year’s FA Cup is played, assuming of course that Arsenal make it that far which is very hard to imagine given the way the team is currently approaching the competition.

22 is the number of goals scored by Arsenal after the 80th minute of games this season. This number is indicative of the way the team have been so slow to get going this campaign and have left it late so often in matches, making them have to chase games hard until the very end either to save a point or win.

3 is the number of teams from the Championship (including Blackburn) to make it to the quarter-finals of this year’s competition at the time of writing (there could be 1 more Championship team and a League 1 team possibly too) so you could argue that a number of other teams from the Premier League have been engaging in the same policy of fielding weakened starting line-ups against lower League teams leading to them all experiencing an early demise. Just because Arsenal are not alone in getting knocked out by clubs from the lower Leagues it definitely does not make it any easier to take and it absolutely does not excuse it.

1 is the number that has always represented the number of managers Arsenal have had in a season since we had 4 back in 1996 when Arsene Wenger replaced Bruce Rioch on a full time basis after both Stewart Houston and Pat Rice had briefly taken the helm. Could this number actually be close to being 2? Is it really time for Wenger to be replaced as the Arsenal manager like people are suggesting? I personally cannot see it as I think the Board still regard him as the best man for the job. I really can’t see him being replaced by anyone who would do a much better job either and let’s not forget that it was only a couple of seasons ago that Wenger was rejecting overtures from Real Madrid choosing to remain loyal to the Gunners.