I’m back! I mean my modem is back! Now I can go to the good ‘old’ days of publishing paragraphs and paragraphs and also the formation, images and videos. I can also read through your comments and views. It’s such a relief! Now that I’m fully empowered I thought I can slightly update the pre-match analysis of this FA Cup Final, given that we are only hours away from the kick-off.

Players missing this wonderful occasion would be Ballack, Carvalho, Sheva, Robben & Mikel. Reports say that Robben could play a few minutes. Of all these players I feel really sorry for Carvalho and Mikel for missing this final. They had a wonderful season and it is very unfortunate that they had to miss out this first final in new Wembley.

Carvalho has signed a 5 year contract, which is great news. He is a silent performer who is slowly becoming a great defender. His outshining of Terry in the last few months is a good testimony to that. It is nice to see player pledging their careers in long term to Chelsea. Carvalho’s extension comes after Bridge, Essien, Drogba and Cole (if my memory serves right). If Terry and Lamps sign their contracts and if Jose also signs an extension (am I asking for too much?!), I wouldnt ask for more this season wrto contract extensions.

Absence of Mikel and Ballack would certainly mean Maka is playing. In the last few matches, Maka, in fact has been rediscovering his form and he is a good big match player to have in a final. To beat Man Utd, we cannot just rely on counterattacks. The only way to beat them is by playing their own attacking game. We should attack them relentlessly to create the fear of opening up at the back. For this reason, I’s put Essien in the midfield and put Paulo in central defence. Paulo has done that before and if we continues his form, this decision could be vindicated. One man who would, make or break for us would be Kalou, if he plays. Kalou gets the ball many many times, gets into superb positions to finish but the end product has been appalling, of late. Either by learning from his mistakes, or wanting to make a mark in a big match or atleast by the law of averages, he should do well.

Jose can also play Ben Sahar instead of Kalou, who showed more promise in the last match he played. May be he was given a run-in against Man Utd for this final. I’m not sure if Jose was joking when he said that he’d play Hilario as the second striker. Well, I dont know how good a second striker he can be, while he is not the best in business at his primary role. The reason why I’m not able to dismiss this is, I dismissed when I read that Essien would play as the centre back and I dismissed when I read Diarra would be the right back. Not long before, Jose was toying with the idea of using Drogba as a central defender. While he didn’t do exactly this, we see Drogba changing his role quite often during the match.

In his customary pre-big-match comment on the referee, Jose subtly suggests that Chelsea would do all that possible to have a fair game and he’s not sure about Man Utd:

Mr. Bennett has enough experience and has had a very low-key season. In a referee, low profile is the best quality a ref can have. When you don’t remember a referee in the game, it is because the referee is perfect and I think Mr. Bennett was that low-profile during the season. It is also a big event for him. He needs help - from me, from Sir Alex and from the players. From us, he will have that help. We want a fair game. We want to help for a big event.

When Bennett refereed in the last final involving Chelsea, we won the Carling Cup. Good sign.

Some inspiration from the last final we won (don’t you love this commentary!)

We have a fantastic final coming up in a beautiful stadium. With both teams sufficiently rested, I’d say Chelsea are the favourites. Also Chelsea would be more hungry than Man Utd to win the Cup. The match at the Bridge was a good curtain raiser from Chelsea’s perspective. Not only we completely dominated the game, to have not allowed a single shot on goal for Man Utd was superb. No matter who played in their team, it was a quite an incredible thing.

I can say this much. Both teams will score but Chelsea will be the winner. I don’t think this game would go to penalties. It could be a 2-1 for Chelsea in full time or by extra time. Drogs to score for sure. It’s gonna be fun! Goodluck!