Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny says he is confident his side can turn around the one-goal deficit when the Blues visit the Emirates for tonight’s Carling Cup semi-final second leg. Town midfielder Colin Healy says the first leg victory has given the Blues the belief that they can reach Wembley.

Szczesny says fatigue was a factor in his side’s first leg loss: "We are playing twice a week, every three days, so there will be some tired legs. But you can't fault us for our attitude, we always gave our best.

"Ipswich was just one of those days where nothing would go in and they did well to defend, then score on the counter-attack. We were disappointed with the result, but are confident for the second leg - we believe we can beat anybody.

"We have a team from the Championship coming to the Emirates, we fancy our chances and are confident we will go through.

"We just have to break them down and score as many goals as we can. They have a one-goal advantage which they will try to defend, but if we can score the first goal [we will have a great chance]. We are confident we can turn this around."

Midfielder Healy says Town have greater belief after their first leg victory over the Gunners: “We will be going there with a chance. Arsenal are one of the best teams in Europe, but not many people thought we’d get a good result in the home leg, and we won, so we will be going down there with a bit of confidence.

“There’s not a fear factor after what happened at Stamford Bridge, because there’s a lot of confidence in the team.

“We know there’s a few goals in the team, and hopefully we can score down there, but we’ve got to defend very well and everyone has got to put in a shift.”

The Irishman is expecting a stronger Gunners line-up and says Town can’t afford to simply sit back and defend for 90 minutes: “Arsenal will have a few players back who did not play in the first leg. I think we need to reach the levels of our first leg performance. In fact, I think we need a bit more still because they will be right up for it.

“We defended well in the first leg, when people were wondering how many goals Arsenal would score. But we can’t just go there and defend. If we do get some chances, we must take them.”

Story syndicated from TWTD.co.uk

Photo: Action Images

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