The stalemate at the Emirates stadium on Saturday means the north Londoners must shoe-horn a fifth round replay, on February 28, into an already bloated fixture list, which includes seven matches in the next four weeks.

Wenger has already seen his weary squad negotiate a fourth round replay with Bolton but he fears his players could be overwhelmed by the physical and mental demands of such a gruelling schedule.

With that in mind, he urged the English Football Association to examine the possibility of making all FA Cup ties finish at the first attempt, although his hopes of success are not high.

"There is a lot that can be done to help the problem of games but nobody is willing to do it," he said. "Replays in the FA Cup could be stopped, with penalties being held straight away.

"There is no magic solution because in order to cut down the number of games, something has to be sacrificed and to do that would damage the traditions of the English game. I would be very happy with stopping replays but other clubs I suspect would not."

As if to emphasise his point, Mark Hughes, the Blackburn manager, immediately suggested such an idea would prove unworkable as it would make the possibility of upsets even more remote.

"I can understand why Arsene is saying that because he is fighting on all fronts," he said. "Successful sides do not want any more games but from my point of view, we deserved some reward from this game and it would have been hard to have been made to play extra-time."