You Bet | Long shot Lincoln City give under pressure Arsene Wenger easy target as Arsenal face FA Cup quarter-final test
Imps travel to Emirates Stadium with manager Danny Cowley saying non-league side are 1000/1 shots
The betting odds suggest Lincoln City have a three in 100 chance of winning their FA Cup quarter-final at Arsenal on Sunday morning (Hong Kong time), while Lincoln manager Danny Cowley puts it at one in 1,000, but either way it would be a huge shock if the Gunners did not go through.
Expectation has a big influence in football, as we saw with Claudio Ranieri’s recent sacking by Leicester City.
Ranieri achieved the impossible by taking Leicester to the Premier League title and into the last 16 of the Champions League, but in doing so raised expectations to much higher levels than would have been the case if he had done a more mediocre job as manager.
He was sacked because Leicester were in a relegation battle, even though they had been in that position the season before he arrived and were rated fifth favourites for the drop at the start of his remarkable title-winning season.
The weight of expectation is bearing down on Arsene Wenger like never before at Arsenal after another torrid week at the hands of Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
In 21 years at the helm, Wenger has built the club into a financially stable institution with a fantastic stadium and a near permanent place in England’s top four, but the footballing success of his early years, which included three league titles and four FA Cups, set a higher benchmark by which to judge his achievements.