Last season Arsenal’s Carling Cup side beat Liverpool convincingly at Anfield. And Everton at Goodison. Yet the first team suffered Premiership defeats at both venues later in the campaign. Where is the logic in that?

And last night’s victory at Ewood Park, albeit in extra time, was achieved with ten men for the latter part of the tie. By a shadow team, none of whom started last Sunday against Chelsea.

Now take your mind back to a couple of Arsenal title winning seasons in the 1990s. 1990-91, Anders Limpar had a fantastic campaign and was key in bringing the championship to Highbury. Ditto 1997-98 and Marc Overmars. The reason these players had such outstanding seasons was that, almost invariably, their opponents were facing them for the first time, and it took a couple of games to work them out and know how to cope with the threat they posed.

So the element of surprise, the unknown, is what set them apart.

Move forward to Arsene Wenger’s current Carling Cup policy. Blood the kids, occasionally use ties to improve match fitness of first team players who have been out or need a game. But as a rule, use players that haven’t seen much first team action nor faced their opponents before.

And that is why the likes of Liverpool, Everton and Blackburn have difficulty coping against Arsenal in these ties. If these kids were playing week in, week out for the first team, they would have been seen and faced often enough for the opposition to have a much better idea how to handle them.

But without prior experience of negating them (or exposing their weaknesses), the task of defeating them is actually that much harder. Footballers like familiarity, not unpredictability. It is perhaps most notable that the team’s weakest area last night was the central defence, where the concept of unpredictability offers little benefit. Sadly, it was all too predictable that Philippe Senderos would struggle against a tall strapping centre forward and so it proved.

However, going forward, there was enough invention and pure footballing ability to make a contest of it, even when the Gunners were reduced to ten men for an ill-advised challenge from the teenage Denilson.

The progress in the competition is wonderful, and it will be fascinating to learn who the semi-final opposition are tonight after the completion of the remaining quarter final. Whoever is drawn out of the hat to face Arsenal, there is no escaping that some of the Gunners will have faced their opponents before, as Spurs, Everton, Liverpool and Chelsea all met Wenger’s pups at some stage of the competition last season.

So don’t make too many plans for a trip to the new Wembley, as an element of the surprise will be lost in the last four. But well done to the players for making it this far and winning three very tricky encounters en route. Credit to the lads, but everything from here on can only be seen as a pure bonus.