Chelsea Head For Wembley

Isn’t this nice? Jose Mourinho, the Chelsea manager and his boss, the club’s owner Roman Abramovich, exchanged a big celebratory hug after the FA Cup semi-final extra-time win over Blackburn Rovers at Old Trafford on Sunday. Perhaps their relationship, which hasn’t been the best of late, is finally showing a few signs of improvement?

Mourinho said, “I have met him [Abramovich] and we had a hug. I told him congratulations and he said the same. That is normal.”" Mourinho’s future has been the constant source of speculation recently following claims he and Abramovich had fallen out.

The speculation and rumours have been so strong recently that Mourinho asked the Chelase Board of Directors to finally break their silence about his future, but Abramovich has still to reveal his position on the somewhat delicate situation.

Mourinho has repeatedly stated his wish to remain at the club. His current contract runs until 2010. I’m no genius when it comes to Maths but I still make that 3 years to go on his current contract! Perhaps Russian arithmetic is different!

Anyway, the win now means the FA has the Final they must have hoped for. Chelsea, the current Premiership Champions will play Man Utd, the current leaders and favourites to win this season’s crown. The Final will be played at the new Wembley stadium on Saturday May 19th.

The semi-final was not easy for Chelsea as Blackburn gave them a scare and could have won it if Morten Gamst Pedersen had done better than send a free header wide after 83 minutes. However, because of that miss the game went to extra-time.

It was the German Michael Ballack who proved to be the hero for the Blues in extra-time, slotting the winner in after 109 minutes.

The semi-final win at Old Trafford means the Chelsea and Man Utd will now play each other at least two more times before the end of this season. First there is the huge Premiership clash at Stamford Bridge on May 9th that could potentially decide the outcome of the Premiership title. Then of course the two teams meet again at Wembley for the FA Cup Final.

There is also the prospect of them meeting for a third time, just a few days after the FA Cup Final. They could both meet in Athens on May 23rd for the first all English Champions League (European Cup) Final. Personally, I don’t think that is going to happen but I’m not going to make any more predictions as to who is going to be there (other than I don’t think it will be both Utd and Chelsea of course!). My predictions for the semi-final line were so poor at only 25% correct, that I’m not doing that again.

What I will say is this, I think Chelsea will win a League and FA Cup double and Utd will win the Premiership title. I just don’t think either of them will win the Champions League. I’m not saying either of them won’t get to the Final, I just don’t think either of them will win it!

I can almost hear you all rushing to place money on both of them to win right now!

The Soccer Blogger

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Many thanks
Rik