Arsenal face Sutton United in the FA Cup 5th round on Monday evening, and there are some red and white connections in the home side’s squad.
Jeffrey Monakana, Jack Jebb and Roarie Deacon are products of the youth system, while Craig Eastmond spent some time around the fringes of the first team squad.
He made 10 appearances for the Gunners before leaving for Colchester United in 2013, and he’s looking forward to seeing some familiar faces when the two sides meet on Monday.
I never thought I would play against Arsenal in my career after I left there,” he said.
“There is going to be so much adrenalin going through me on Monday night. I support Arsenal, joined the club when I was 11 and then came through the ranks. Pulling on the shirt at Emirates Stadium was my dream come true.
“Seeing old faces like Steve Bould and Arsene Wenger is going to be good, but we have to show we not just here to look around and be amazed by Arsenal. Hopefully, we can show how good we are and there will be an upset.”
And he recalls the influence Arsenal had on his career.
“I was playing right-back and Wenger told Steve Bould that he saw me as a midfield player,” he continued.
“He saw me reading the game and breaking up the play well. I took that on board and am still playing midfield now. He was a big influence on my career.
“He always believes in young players and gave me my chance.”
So, it will be an emotional day for Eastmond, and perhaps some of the other Arsenal connected players, but let’s hope we don’t show them any kindnesses during the 90 minutes.
Please don’t do a Wrexham
I hope we turn on a Barcelona-like display and bury them. I am so fucking bored of seeing us getting rinsed in the media. I want the Sutton players running their legs into the ground trying to get the ball off of us. I want to light these cunts up like Harrods at Christmas.
Normally I would think differently, but after the past couple of weeks, fuck the ‘magic of the cup’. Double-digit win please ?
he looks like the battered-down version of Theo Walcott. Hope the ref suffers a bout of confusion and send Eastmond off instead of Walcott.
haha wtf.
He does look a bit like Walcott if Walcott had a heavy drinking problem and never got that Espresso machine wifey promised him.
I remember in 2010 when our midfield was depleted due to injuries (and lack of proper signings) and Craig Eastmond from the academy started in the DM position at Bolton alongside Cesc and Diaby. We won 2-0 and fans heaped praises on him, some (on BBC 606 at least) hailing him as “LANS”. He’d be skinned alive the following week as the disorganized Arsenal went down 3-1 and out of the FA Cup at Stoke. The final stroke for the “promising English talent” would be when he scored an own goal in Donetsk early in the following season. I think… Read more »
Was it that Bolton game where Matt Taylor assaulted Fabregas?
Someone had a wee look on wiki
Winning the cup would be nice if we could do that. No pressure…
Patrick unlike you, most of us here actually follow Arsenal from way back. You mean you can’t remember the events of only 6 yrs ago when Craig Eastmond, Fran Melinda, Ignasi Miguel, Henri Lansbury etc made cameo appearances for Arsenal? Do you have to rely on wikileaks to remind you what you actually watched?
from time to time I do look up what happened to all the youth players we thought might make it, merida is at least back from the lower leagues but we hyped him up so much, feel like lansbury has done fairly well, his debut goal was that one against spurs wasnt it, wont forget that
Don’t mean to be a prick but it’s Fran Merida and Ignasi Miquel
Roarie Deacon is a decent player, he could give us a few heart stopping moments.