TheSportsCampus

Chelsea will not go two seasons without any silverware. The 128th FA Cup final may not have started as they had planned, but it ended as well as they could have hoped for. Billed as the "Battle of the Blues", it was the team in their away yellow jersey that took home the honours and few could say that they didn't deserve it.

If Chelsea thought that gifting Guus Hiddink a perfect parting present would be an easy task, they were in for a rude awakening. Not even half a minute had gone by that Louis Saha, playing his first FA Cup Final, had put the Toffees ahead. Hiddink chose to go with John Obi Mikel ahead of Michael Ballack, and it was Mikel's unconvincing clearance of a Steven Piennar cross fell in the path of the French striker. Saha put it past Petr Cech's right hand to score the fastest goal in FA Cup Final history (26 seconds on the clock).

But the goal was hardly a trailer of what was to come. Chelsea got their act together and started getting the majority of the possession, although Everton didn't seem too flustered. Florent Malouda was clearly posing the greatest threat to the Merseyside team, making runs down the left flank again and again, ably supported by Man of the Match Ashley Cole. After a couple of crosses from Malouda failed to account for anything, on 21 minutes Drogba managed to get his head to a peach of a cross from the French winger, running past Joleon Lescott and his thundering header flew past Tim Howard in the Everton goal.

Everton were barely in the game after the opening goal and they knew they had to bring about a great change in their game if they wanted to give themselves a chance to lift the Cup. Hibbert, who was given a torrid time at right back in the first half by Florent Malouda, was replaced by Lars Jacobsen after the break. But the problem lay in attack for Everton and even after the second half began the few occasions they did get the ball nothing substantial came out of it.

Nicolas Anelka nearly made them pay dearly for it on the stroke of an hour when Lampard chipped a clever ball over the top of the Everton defence and Anelka's lob over Howard was just a touch too high. The midfield was completely in Chelsea's control.

Everton did have a glorious chance on 67 minutes when a short free kcik was played to Leighton Baines. The Everton left back sent in his cross and Saha got to it first but just couldn't get his aim right. Had the header been on target it would have been too powerful for Cech to have had any chance.

Chelsea finally managed to get their noses ahead in the 72nd minute. Frank Lampard, who so far seemed to be having an under-par game, received the ball from Nicolas Anelka slightly outside the Everton penalty area, feinted a shot, slipped while changing direction but just managed to get sufficient power and precision to send the ball past Tim Howard. Howard should have probably done better, but Chelsea did deserve to go ahead.

The match was nearly wrapped up soon after. Ashley Cole did extremely well to get to a cross-field ball, passed to Frank Lampard who sent in a through ball to find Malouda. However, Malouda sent it over the crossbar. Had it gone in it would have been highly unfair since the linesman failed to notice that Malouda was offside when the ball was played to him.

A couple of minutes later Malouda fired a cracker of a shot from 25 yards that hit the underside of the bar and, although it looked like on TV to have gone in, the referee waved play on. Replays suggested that it was a goal. Maybe Mr. Sepp Blatter should rethink on using technology for goal line decisions.

After that Everton tried hard to get possession of the ball and get a decent shot on goal, but their desperation was best summed up by Tim Cahill's effort at the end of normal time. Nearly thirty yards out, the Aussie found a little space but his shot was more in hope than anything else and the ball was way off target.

Few would have doubted who was going to win the match after Chelsea had equalised. The match served as a great example of the bridge in gap in between the Big Four in the Premier League with the rest, with even the Fifth Best Team in the League barely managing to give a good account of themselves. Maybe they lacked the presence of Mikael Arteta and his creativity, along with Semi-Final hero Phil Jagielka. Everton have done fabulously over the past couple of seasons with their limited resources, but it's clear that unless someone pumps in the money at Goodison Park, the Toffees would still keep fighting for Fifth Place for a number of years.

File Photography Copyright: Ryu Voelkl

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