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The fourth round match of the English Football League Cup (Capital One Cup) between "Reading" and London's "Arsenal" teams will go down in football history. In a fantastic thriller, the London team celebrated victory after extra time, with goals in the match coming approximately every ten minutes.
The "Arsenal" club celebrated a 7-5 (1-4) victory, despite having a four-goal deficit at one point.
Playing at home, "Reading", which occupies only the 18th place in the Premier League, managed to send the strong "Arsenal" team into a deep crisis in the first twenty minutes. Jason Roberts scored the first goal in the 12th minute, Laurent Koscielny scored an own goal in the 19th minute, and Mikele Leigertwood scored the third goal in the 20th minute.
The "Reading" club, which had not won a single victory in league matches, scored a fourth goal in the 37th minute after another cross from the corner. This time, Noel Hunt was the scorer.
"Arsenal", completely shaken, was awakened in the last seconds of the first half by Theo Walcott, who received a perfect pass from Andrey Arshavin and scored a goal.
The hosts started the second half strongly and had two great chances to score, but failed to capitalize. Gradually, the "Arsenal" game began to show signs of recovery, and Arsene Wenger threw Olivier Giroud onto the field. He needed seven minutes to score a goal (64 min.), which followed T.Walcott's corner kick.
The match was nearing its end, and it seemed that the hosts would defeat "Arsenal" for the first time in history, but the Londoners still had a few aces up their sleeve. In the 89th minute, defender L.Koscielny corrected his mistake by scoring a goal with his head. With the referee adding 6 minutes, at the very end of regular time, T.Walcott scored his second goal, and the teams had to play extra time.
In the first half of extra time, "Reading" again had the opportunity to turn the score around, but failed to do so. "Arsenal" young forward Marouane Chamakh put the "Gunners" ahead for the first time in the 103rd minute. However, "Reading" still did not give up, and at the start of the second extra time (115 min.), Pavel Pogrebnyak equalized the score again.
Both teams showed no desire to settle the score in a penalty shootout and kept attacking. At the end of the match, after a rebound from the ball following A.Arshavin's shot in the 120+1 min., T.Walcott was the first to reach it and scored his third goal. "Reading" tried to attack, but their defense opened up, and in the 120+3 min., M.Chamakh scored the seventh goal – he was finally the last.
Other results:
"Leeds U." 3 - 0 "Southampton"
"Sunderland" 0 - 1 "Middlesbrough"
"Swindon T." 2 - 3 "Aston Villa"
"Wigan Athletic" 0 - 0 "Bradford" ("Bradford" won after a penalty shootout 4-2).
