Most cup finals in England are between the Big Four, so Arsenal v Chelsea conforms to a pattern.
I reckon Arsenal play better without Henry but I also reckon a manager should not use a final as a development exercise.
If Drogba or Lampard score early, Sunday in Cardiff could be a rout.
So that’s the first thing to say : Arsenal could lose 4-0.
That’s why so many Arsenal season-ticket holders did not apply for tickets for the Carling Cup Final. They think it could be a bummer and they don’t wanna spend four hours on a motorway coming home after a rout and listening a radio phone-ins from angry, distraught Gooners.
I haven’t read much about this game or thought about it at all until now, 9.30 on Saturday morning. I won’t re-capitulate. You all know what Arsenal’s youngish Carling team have done so far, knocking out Spurs and Liverpool.
Arsene Wenger, more of as gambler than many realise, admits he’s taking a big risk. He knows his boys could get hammered.
He says, “That can happen with any team. It’s always a risk. But you believe in your players or you don’t. I have 100 per cent belief in this team and I’m confident that on Sunday they will tell me I am right.”
A lot of people will be looking at Denilson and Shevchenko, in particular.
Compact and mature, Denilson is a metronome who can control the tempo of a game and give his team a regular rhythm, as Fabregas does.
Denilson captained every Brazil youth team from the age of 14 to 19, so he is an extraordinarily strong character, as Fabregas is. He will have to hold the team together, which is a big job for a teenager.
As a child Shevchenko and his family were evacuated from a village near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and that trauma must have had a profound effect on the Ukrainian’s thinking, his desire to build a better life.
He is now starting to show the goalscoring ability which excited millions when he played for Dynamo Kiev and AC Milan.
At Wembley in 1998, Sheva was the best striker I’ve seen in the Champions League, Exploding away from Overmars, shoulder-charging Keown to the deck, scaring Arsenal all night long, Andrej Shevchenko looked like a self-propelled, self-motivated gladiator, an awesome physical specimen who was Shearer with far more skill and pace, Ronaldo with far more energy and consistency.
Then Chelsea signed him and he struggled, looked slow, didn’t score. Eight years after Wembley, he looked burned-out.
But in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, Shevchenko might write himself into Chelsea’s history.
As I said last week, Arsenal’s next seven games look tough. We shall just have to take them one at a time and see what happens.
On Sunday, Arsene will find out if he was right.