So the FA Cup Final is upon us this Saturday. Who do you think is going to walk away with the Cup? What do you think will be the score? Will it go to penalties? Vote on who you think will be the winner, discuss it below.
Would love Stoke to do it but can't see past a Man City victory unfortunately. I will use this as an excuse for a rant though. What the **** is the FA cup final doing on a day when there are league fixtures? I may come over as all 'when I were a lad' but the FA cup final always signified the end of the season and long summers that were ahead. This now typifies all that is wrong with the game - the Champions league is put first, no doubt driven by Sky's money, meaning the FA cup final essentially becomes 'just another game'. No wonder clubs don't give as much of a **** about winning it.
I agree, the prestige of the FA Cup has been further diminished by not having a dedicated FA Cup Final day. As a personal protest, I've sold my six FA Cup Final tickets and will no longer be attending. I would have made this protest, even if I hadn't been offered ã1800 for the tickets.
I believe it is because of the Champions League Final being at Wembley on the day we would normally have the FA Cup final! Typical old farts chasing the big money from UEFA rather than cater for the British fan. Read somewhere that it will be the same next year as well!
Like you "feat", I would like to see Stoke do it just to prove that a club on a "small" budget can beat a team that has a bottomless pit for a bank account!!
I hope Roland Rat's; i mean; Tony Pulis' men win the cup. Don't like seeing that Ballotelli's smug face on the telly. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image It's uncanny.
It depends on how you value the tickets, there's a ticket price and an annual membership fee for Club Wembley, but if you add them together, the six tickets for each of the ten included events each year work out at about ã2,300 per event. If you bought Club Wembley tickets online, they're about ã400 each, but I sold mine to someone I do business with in Manchester, so I rounded them down a bit.
I'm with you on this tigerfeet. The decline of importance of the FA Cup, which predates the leagues, premiership, et al., is something of great sadness to older fans. I will be watching and I hope Stoke win (and Jon Walters scores the winner). With Man Citeh having already qualified for the Champions League they could either come out with a total don't care attittude for this game or now the pressure is off in one competition be more committed to winning. Does anyone know, if they pass Arsenal is that automatically into the group stages or do 3rd and 4th have to play in the preliminary rounds.
The top three go straight into the group stages, only the fourth team goes into qualifying, Man City will go all out to nick third place.
Tricky. I see either an end-to-end classic (with Stoke winning 3-2) or a cramped, dispiriting affair (with Stoke winning 1-0 after extra time). I can't remember who said it, right enough, but they said something along the lines of: Manchester City have a great squad of players, but they simply don't have a team. And the converse of this, I suppose, is that Stoke City have a fairly mediocre squad of players but an exceptionally useful and coherent team. I'd quite like Man City to win, for some unfathomable reason, but I can't really see it happening. And no, I'm not an expert on the English game - I have the merest passing interest - although this is probably already abundantly clear. Tigerfeat: "What the **** is the FA cup final doing on a day when there are league fixtures? ....This typifies all that is wrong with the game - the Champions league is put first, no doubt driven by Sky's money, meaning the FA cup final essentially becomes 'just another game'. No wonder clubs don't give as much of a **** about winning it." Quite. Nicely put.
I agree that the FA Cup Final should be the last domestic game of the season. Unfortunately those at the FA obviously don't agree as they've bent over backwards to get the Champions League final at Wembley, meaning no other events are to be held at the stadium 2 weeks ahead of the game (as stated by UEFA). I've read they've also had some of the taxes written off for this game too, as UEFA were't happy about how high they were. They should get their priorities right because they're becoming a laughing stock, especially after the World Cup bid.
agree, it is a shame about the cup final being almost overshadowed, it doesn't feel right. i'm hoping man city win personally, used to go see them quite a bit when i was at uni in manchester and always had a bit of a soft spot for them, with or without ridiculous sums of money.
Not a fan of either team but if Stoke can wind up the nutters in Man City's team then they could sneak it, could easily see the likes of Balotelli and De Jong getting sent off, and De Jong has previous from the World Cup final when he should have gone for studding somebody in the bollocks.
