The FA Cup final is almost upon us and the excitement is building. Our league form of late has certainly taken away a lot of the optimism usually associated with our loyal fans but come kick off on Saturday the ninety minutes against Chelsea will be all that matters. There has been debate this week about how the Premier League's growing importance is devaluing the FA Cup and it's hard to argue with that, teams now see finishing 4th or 5th as more of an aim than winning a trophy, the prestige of playing in Europe is more attractive than having a nice medal collection to look at when your career comes to an end. If given the choice this season of winning the FA Cup or gaining a Champions League place the decision is easy for me. We're still a work in progress and if we were in next season's Champions League I wouldn't see us as contenders for winning it so on that basis I'd pick winning this season's FA Cup over finishing in the top four. Ok, in an ideal world we would achieve both but this season has been about as far away from an ideal world as it could have been. We exist to win trophies, Liverpool fans live for finals, we have the banners, the banter, the passion and the global fanbase to make us the ideal participants in any showpiece game.
There's no point pretending we're anything other than underdogs for the big game, a couple of dodgy results aside Chelsea have been excellent under Di Matteo and he's even got Fernando Torres scoring (maybe he could spend a little time training with Andy Carroll). The Chelsea players deserve to be in the Champions League final for their performances in the knockout stages and I have a sneaky feeling they will beat Bayern in the final. Whether or not their fans deserve such an honour after their behaviour before their semi final against Spurs is a little more debatable. It certainly wasn't the majority of their supporters shouting 'murderers' during the silence for the Hillsborough victims but it was by no means just a couple of isolated morons and this can only add extra spice to the final at Wembley. There's no love lost between the two sets of supporters as it is and the extra edge that has been added to the atmosphere should make for plenty of noise. I like the banner I've seen that says 'you were silent for fifty years, would one more minute have been too much to ask?'. To the point without being aggressive, perfect.
It's difficult to choose a starting line up to play Chelsea. It's difficult to score against them with just one forward but the way they play in midfield almost demands we play three in the centre so it's a dilemma for the boss. I expect the team to be Reina, Johnson, Agger, Skrtel and Enrique in defence, Spearing, Henderson and Gerrard in the middle of midfield with Bellamy and Downing supporting Suarez from the wide areas but it also wouldn't surprise me if Carroll starts ahead of Bellamy and we go two up front. Drogba will start up front for Chelsea and he always seems to do well against us, he's been a really impressive player since he joined the Premier League and if he hadn't been so theatrical I think he's the type of player who fans of all teams would love. Torres will probably be on the bench and has shown signs lately of being a real threat so in order to win we will need to stay concentrated at the back for the entire game, any defending like that in the semi final against Everton will be suicidal.
We've beaten Chelsea twice already this season and we're certainly capable of winning this weekend but it won't be easy. It's a tough game to call and extra time or even penalties could well come into play, meaning the Liverpool supporters could be arriving home very late. The FA Cup final traditionally kicks off at 3pm on a Saturday but this time it's going to start at 5:15pm. If anybody thinks the Champions League is devaluing the FA Cup they could be right, but the FA themselves aren't exactly helping to keep their competition traditional. Moving both semi finals to Wembley and now messing with the final kick off time shows where their priorities now lie, money first, football second.
It could be a classic game, North v South, Red v Blue, tradition v money, but at the end of the day it's Liverpool v Chelsea, it's the FA Cup final and it's almost here!!
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