Frenchman Laurent Robert kept Newcastle's FA Cup dream alive as Arsene Wenger's gamble of resting David Seaman, Robert Pires and Denis Bergkamp almost backfired. Newcastle began the game with greater urgency and dominated for most of the first half. It was Arsenal who opened the scoring in the 10th minute though when Sylvian Wiltord sent in a low cross for Edu to tap in at the front post.
Newcastle levelled the match in the 52nd minute when a long ball was nodded on by Alan Shearer to Lauren Robert who took it on his chest and fired into the bottom left hand corner with a long distance right footed drive. Bobby Robson replaced Carl Cort with England Under-21 international Shola Ameobi with 20 minutes remaining, while Bergkamp came on for the Gunners but neither team managed the decider and the match ended 1-1. The two teams will now meet on 23 March at Highbury.
Filed by Johnny Proby
