Today is the start of the Fa Cup third round, a competition which seems to have lost it’s lustre recently. Most premier League teams are either too concerned with staying up to care or prioritising the Champions League over the Fa cup.

It has to be said that Arsenal haven’t been putting the Cup at the top of their list of priorities in the recent past. I wonder however if this season we will see a change, will Arsenal actually try to win the trophy.

King Kolo Toure could be leaving Arsenal.

The last time we won that trophy was the last time we won anything, that was in 2005 almost 5 years ago. It is about time we win another trophy and I can see no real reason why we can’t win this cup.

This Arsenal team is very well suited to win a knockout competition. We seem unable to get up for less than glamorous ties, but no one can deny that on their day this Arsenal team can beat anyone. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be the FA cup holders come the end of this season.

It almost feels as though it is a lowering of standards to settle for winning the FA cup. What has Arsenal come to? Having to win a cup simply because we cannot win the league. We are not that kind of club, winning the league should come easy, winning the FA cup should be a bonus not an achievement. That’s just it though — it feels that way — do we have any right to win the Premier League or any other trophy?

The easy answer is, we don’t. Winning trophies should not come automatically, we have to fight for it, we have to earn it, somewhere along the line it probably became to easy and we’ve lost sight of how hard it is to achieve success. We cannot expect to achieve anything without putting in the hard work.

Take the Kolo Toure situation, now I like Toure, he is a fan favourite and no one would want to see him leave the club. We have to ask ourselves though is Toure putting in the hard work? I am no expert on fitness but surely it is not difficult to see that Toure is patently unfit.

Toure has not been the player we’ve come to expect since his return from the ACN. I don’t know what kind of juju/voodoo/mumbo-jumbo happened over in Ghana but something happened to the guy. He then contracted malaria in the off season and has been struggling since.

When a player depends on pace, especially a defender who uses his pace to compensate for lack of positioning, it is difficult to do the job if you cannot call upon that pace when needed. Toure not only has lost that pace but — if reports are to be believed — he still thinks that he is still warranted more playing action.

Toure should — instead of putting in for transfer — keep his head down, lose those extra ounces he is carrying around and get back to the level that is expected of him. I bet that’s what Billy “big mouth” Gallas said to him.

Maybe the truth is Toure knows that he has lost it and feels there is no way he can get his performance levels back to it’s peak. He feels that if he leaves now Arsenal can get a decent transfer fee and find a better replacement. If that is the case then I truly will applaud King Kolo Toure.

If however Toure thinks that he deserves a place in the starting 11 without a drastic improvement, then I’m sorry to say he is wrong on that score.

That’s my story and I’m sticking by it.