So the Carling Cup adventure is over for another season after a 2-0 defeat to Burnley at Turf Moor last night.

The youngsters (and Sylvester) were found wanting at the back and up front and they were beaten by a hungry home side who can add our scalp to the one of Chelsea. The difference is, of course, that we played our young players, Chelsea had more or less their first team out.

Kevin McDonald was the hero for Burnley, scoring both the goals. Mark Randall will look at replays of both of them and be less than happy with his contribution. He failed to track him for the first and was out-muscled in the area for the second. But we had chances and the forwards didn't take them. Bendtner in particular had a very poor game and his attitude and lazy style, if it is a style and not just pure laziness, is very frustrating. He might be part of the first team squad but that doesn't mean he doesn't have to put the effort in when he plays in the Carling Cup.

The Burnley keeper, Brian Jensen, made a number of good saves to keep us at bay. You wonder how different things might have been had Bendtner scored with that early chance, just a minute or so before Burnley scored. But it just wasn't our night in front of goal.

Arsene Wenger said afterwards:

If you have six one-on-ones with the keeper and do not score, you have to question the qualification. You praise the goalkeeper and question the strikers.

He cut a frustrated figure on the sidelines as we saw them chase the game in the second half. Too many of the little flicks didn't come off, some of the passing, despite our possession was careless, and in and around the box the final ball just didn't happen on too many occasions. He said:

We had the potential to go through and we lost tonight against the least difficult team of the three we played. That is what young players learn. In football it is efficiency and focus from the first minute on and when you don't have the right focus you pay for it.

It's a tough lesson all right. For a lot of these players their involvement in first team football is over for the season now. Perhaps we might see some of them in the FA Cup but I'm hoping that's a competition we take seriously this season as it provides a good chance of silverware.

But nights like last night will happen with young players. They can be brilliant one game and have a complete off-night the next. I think what will have registered with the manager is the application, or lack of it, shown by one or two. It's a shame to go out as I do enjoy the Carling Cup as a competition but these lads have provided us with two of the most enjoyable nights of the season so far, the Sheffield United and Wigan games were fantastic, and they deserve great credit for that.

That Sky were talking about Burnley's win over us as a bigger achievement than beating Chelsea tells you how well the Carling Cup Arsenal is regarded. Still, there's no shame in going out of the Carling Cup to a decent Burnley side and with better finishing we might well have won.

So now the focus turns back to the league and Wigan on Saturday. We'll preview that game over the next couple of days.

Not much else happening really. There's some stuff about Patrick Vieira talking about how Roy Keane was his toughest ever opponent but it's nothing we haven't heard before, really. Anyone else think Keane with his beard looks like Harrison Ford at the start of the Fugitive? Just me them, ok.

The Mirror reports that Jay Simpson is to sign a new deal with the club. I suspect it was his little 'tache that swayed things.

So how about a little competition to take your minds off last night's defeat? I have three copies of the book Arsènal: The Making of a Modern Super-Club by Kevin Witcher (The Gooner) and Alex Fynn. Not just any old copies though. These are signed. By Arsene Wenger.

Not too shabby, eh? To win just answer the very simple question.

Before Arsene came to manage Arsenal he was the manager of a Japanese side. Was it:

a) Kendo Nagasaki b) Grampus Eight c) Ninja Antlers

Answers to book@arseblog.com, if you please. You have until Thursday night and the Random Number Generator will pick the three winners for Friday morning. If you don't win you can still buy the book at a discounted price by going here and using the code 'rocky' at check-out.

Right, that's that. Have a good day. More tomorrow.

Good morning all,

there's so much going on these day there's barely time to think. Following Sunday's game against Chelsea we have another one tonight. This time it's Carling Cup action against Burnley, the team who knocked Chelsea out in the last round.

It's another chance for some of the young players to show what they're made of. Arsene Wenger says we'll see Silvestre, Vela, Bendtner and Fabianski while the likes of Wilshere, Ramsey (who talks here about how much he's improved since joining the club), Gibbs and Merida will all probably be involved. It's another decent test for the lads on what's sure to be a freezing cold night at Turf Moor.

We have played them recently, a 2-0 win in the FA Cup last season, but after beating Chelsea at Stamford Bridge they won't be afraid. The full squad should be released later this morning. Martin Keown and Bob Wilson look over some of our young English talent on the BBC.

Update: Here's the full squad. Looks like it might Sylvester + Rodgers at centre-half. 

After the win against Chelsea Cesc has reiterated the manager's words about how the team needs to focus for every game. He says:

We showed a different attitude and that is what we want to do from now on. We have shown we can do it, to beat the big teams, so we can have no excuse with not doing it against the rest of the teams.

No arguments here with regard to that. Emmanuel Adebayor believes Sunday's result sends a message to the rest of the teams in the league:

People wrote us off in the Premier League and now, we've sent out a message to every team that we believe in ourselves and we can do something. We forget about all that happened. We are always together.

The proof of whether the lessons have been learned or not will come on Saturday when we play Wigan at home. For every high this season there seems to have been a low and in December the only thing you want lowing are cattle, although not if you have a baby because they'll wake him up.

Meanwhile Robin van Persie has played down any talk of him being the one William Gallas's barbed comments were aimed at last week. When asked if it was him, he said:

Are you suggesting that William was talking about me? I don't know that, because he never told me anything and I didn't see my name in the papers, so I never felt that he was speaking about me. For me, there isn't a problem.

Which is fair enough. And at this point does it really matter who it was? It's all water under the bridge now anyway. And it was Eboue, according to a phone call left on the Arsecast hotline yesterday. So there you go.

I wonder in the entire existence of Arseblog how many times we've been linked with a transfer move for Yaya Toure. It must be close to a hundred at this stage. The Sun doesn't let us down with talk of a €6m deal in January. He's not getting his game at Barcelona though so maybe he'd fit the bill for a January transfer.

Away from Arsenal, Arseblog has been nominated for 'best podcast' and 'best community' over at the Soccerlens awards. So feel free to go and vote. For Arseblog. I should make that clear as this site is populated by smart arses.

And if you're a Twitter user, Arseblog, with almost some Arsenal content (mostly during games), can be found here.

So that's about it. I'm looking forward to tonight's game, even though I'll have to record it and watch it later. After the stress and pressure of Chelsea it's nice to be able to just sit back and enjoy the football. Come on the kids. Erm ... I mean ... COME ON ARSENAL!

Till tomorrow.