Arsenal managed a win over Burnley in the FA Cup 4th Round, 2-1. With a Premier League match on Tuesday against Southampton, Arsene Wenger fielded a team of the recently fit, and youngsters. Our new man, Mohamed Elneny found his way onto the field for the first time, next to Francis Coquelin, playing for the first time since his injury a few months ago. Not a bad pairing for the day. Elneny didn’t look quite the savior that Coquelin has been, but he looked very good indeed.

What I found most interesting was the presence of the Alex Three: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alex Iwobi, and the other Alex….well, really Alexis. As in AlexIs The Man. Alex just isn’t a quintessential sporting name, so you don’t expect three of them on the pitch at once. Alexis played a few minutes last weekend near the end of the match against Chelsea, but started today in the center. He looked lively as usual and scored a very fine goal, the second one of the match. The first goal had been scored by a non-Alex, Calum Chambers, who was playing right back today. You’ll rarely see a better placed goal than that one.

Arsenal made hard work of it, but Arsene’s gamble to rest our stars ended up paying off and we’ll head to FA Cup Round 5.

Alexis and the other Alex, Alex Iwobi, shared the same high rating by the Arseblog fans today, so we did an unofficial tiebreaker and selected Alex Iwobi as our celebrant of the Gooner Triumphal Feast. Iwobi is from Nigeria, so we had a dessert called Shuku Shuku. You can find the recipe here.

Iwobi is 19 years old and looks to have a marvelous future at Arsenal, if only he can find some regular playing time. He had a great day and was in the mix for almost every attack.

We had tickets for the match today, but decided not to go to London this time. Instead, tomorrow we’ll be celebrating the birthday of our beautiful baby girl. 18 years old, just a tad younger than our Gooner Triumphal Feast honoree. No Shuku Shuku for her: she has requested a devil’s food cake. The last time I made it for her birthday, I literally set it on fire while it was cooking. Then I burned the frosting. We ate it anyway and it still tasted good. Hoping for a more successful run of it tomorrow. A lovely young woman deserves a lovely cake.