Soccer/FA Cup: Manchester United and Arsenal avoided each other in yesterday's FA Cup semi-final draw, setting up the possibility of a showpiece final between the two biggest names left in the competition.

But Arsenal will be the happier of the two sides, having been drawn to face the cup outsiders, Blackburn Rovers, whom they play in the English Premiership this Saturday. Manchester United, meanwhile, will play in-form Newcastle United.

The draw will please the English Football Association, who saw last year's final, in which United beat Millwall 3-0, as an embarrassingly one-sided damp squib.

The mere possibility of the two most successful sides in Premiership history meeting in the final should ensure a high level of interest in the semi-finals, which are both to be played in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on the weekend of April 16th-17th. The final will be at the same venue on Saturday, May 21st.

Newcastle's Alan Shearer was quietly optimistic after the draw. "I have a huge respect for everything about Manchester United," he said. "But it is a tie we can win. I said it would be tough whoever we got and I believed that. Now if we win the cup no one can deny that we have won it the hard way.

"We have already faced Chelsea, an in-form Tottenham and now we have the likely favourites in the semi-final. It will be a huge game, massive."

Blackburn, ostensibly the weakest semi-finalist, should not be under-estimated. Since Mark Hughes succeeded Graeme Souness as manager last September Rovers have become not only increasingly hard to beat but arguably the Premiership's most physically aggressive ensemble; in other words, just the sort of spiky side capable of undoing Arsenal.

"We've never felt so wanted as we have in the last 24 hours," the Blackburn assistant manager, Mark Bowen, joked yesterday.

"Everybody wanted us, but we're going to show everybody that, if Arsenal take us lightly, then we're well prepared and they'll come a cropper."