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Monday night's draw at the London Stadium gave us Southampton away on the weekend of April 4-5. Our Championship opposition have already knocked out a Premier League team, but this is a tie that is entirely within our reach if we approach it with the right focus.

The full draw is like this: Manchester City will host Liverpool, Chelsea will take on League One side Port Vale at home, Leeds will travel to London to face West Ham, who defeated Brentford on penalties after extra time, and we will travel to St Mary's.

The route to this point has been methodical for us. We beat Portsmouth away in the third round, a 4-1 win after going behind early, with Gabriel Martinelli helping himself to a hat-trick. We then faced Wigan Athletic at home in the fourth round, where we scored four goals inside the opening half-hour, the game ending 4-0 at full time. Mansfield away in the fifth round was trickier than expected on a stodgy pitch. Noni Madueke put us ahead, but Mansfield levelled, before Eberechi Eze came off the bench to settle it 2-1. Now we are in the last eight of the FA Cup for the first time since we won the trophy in 2020.

Southampton are in the Championship this season under manager Tonda Eckert, who replaced Will Still in November, and before the fifth round they had extended an unbeaten league run to nine matches. They beat Doncaster Rovers in the third round, came through against Leicester City in the fourth, and knocked out Fulham with a 91st-minute Ross Stewart penalty on Sunday. They are a side with momentum in the cup and they have beaten two Premier League teams already this season. We should not be casual about this.

The tie falls on the April 4-5 weekend, which means it sits just days before a potential Champions League quarter-final first leg, should we get through Bayer Leverkusen. We also have the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City at Wembley on March 22 before any of that. The fixture scheduling across the next six weeks is relentless. Arteta will need to manage the squad carefully, but that is a conversation for another time. Right now, all that matters is that the path to the FA Cup semi-final is open. The FA Cup semi-finals are at Wembley on April 25-26 and the final is on May 16.

We travel to St Mary's to face a side that is organised, hard to beat, and clearly capable of raising their level in cup football. The quarter-final will require the same focus and intensity we have brought to every Premier League game in this run-in. We are still competing on all fronts, and the squad has the depth to handle a Championship side even with rotation. The Wembley semi-final is there to be taken, but St Mary's in April comes first and it deserves to be treated accordingly.