Crystal Palace will get the opportunity to avenge their 1990 FA Cup Final defeat at the hands of Manchester United after both sides made it through the Semi-Finals to square off in the final of the world’s most prestigious domestic cup competition.
Both Louis Van Gaal and Alan Pardew have had better seasons. Both could quite easily find themselves in the dole queue come the summer. And yet on May 21 both managers will stand tall and proud as they lead their respective teams onto the Wembley turf as the finalists of the FA Cup.
Man United was the first side to make it to the final after a thrilling encounter against Everton. The blue half of Merseyside haven’t won a trophy since beating United in the FA Cup back in 1995. United haven’t earned any silverware since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club with a Premier League title in their trophy cabinet.
If the record books didn’t show otherwise, you would never know Sir Alex was ever at this great club such has been their inept performances in the past two seasons. And yet, in the past few weeks, there have been signs that the fast flowing lava-like attacks that made his Red Devils the scourge of world football were returning.
Everton could have been, and should have been, burned to a crisp in the first half. Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, and Anthony Martial, conducted by a deeper lying Wayne Rooney, carved the Toffee Men open at will but missed chance after chance. At the other end of the field, the usually clinical Romelu Lukaku was having a game to forget missing two golden chances on the break.
Four players were facing their old club in this tie, and it was one them, Marouane Fellaini, who scored the first goal. Martial once again driving at the heart of the Everton defence before cutting the ball back for the man with the joke wig to put the ball in the back of the Everton net. It was the first goal that Everton had conceded in this year’s cup run.
I don’t know what happened at the break. Roberto Martinez doesn’t look like a pizza thrower of football boot kicker. But something changed. Everton came out of the traps a lot quicker than a dithering United side. And fortune favoured the brave when Timothy Fosu-Mensah was judged to have brought Ross Barkley down in the box when the replay showed what a great tackle it was.
Lukaku stepped up to put Everton level only to see David De Gea dive sharply to his right to get a giant paw on the ball and sweep it aside of the goal. It was another world class save from the Premier League‘s best goalkeeper by a country mile, and justice was served.
The Spaniard’s penalty save didn’t spur on United. Instead, it had the reverse effect. Everton threw men forward in search of an equaliser, and Martinez changed the game dramatically when Gerard Deulofeu came off the bench to replace Aaron Lennon and run United ragged.
Then in the 74th minute, the zippy Spaniard cut into the United box and whipped the ball into the United six-yard box only for Chris Smalling to scythe the ball into the back of his own net.
Game on.
Five minutes later and Lukaku could have sealed it when he headed wide from the six-yard box. And then, with time ticking into the final minute of injury time, Anthony Martial cut in from the left wing, exchanged passes with Ander Herrera before slotting the ball past Robles to seal it for United with virtually the last kick of the game.
It was like Fergie time all over again.
Crystal Palace 2 v 1 Watford
So who would face United?
Both Crystal Palace and Watford had only one prior FA Cup Final appearance each. Palace losing in a replay against United in 1990, and who can forget Elton John’s tears as his Watford side lost to Everton in the 1984 final.
It was a strange match up.
At the start of the season both of these teams were flying. It’s no exaggeration to say that they were up there with West Ham and Southampton as the surprise acts of this incredible play.
And then, they both went to rat shit, interestingly, when they started to go deeper in the FA Cup. So it was a game that both manager’s desperately needed to win just to paper over some quite serious cracks that seemed to have emerged as the season went on.
In the end, it was a tale of three headers that would headline this act. A sixth minute Yohan Cabaye corner was flicked onto the head of Yannick Bolassie to open the scoring for Palace. Watford’s captain Troy Deeney equalised in the 55th minute when he headed home from the near post. And six minutes later Connor Wickham leapt like a rather large salmon to head home the winning goal for Alan Pardew’s men.
And so the final is set.
Man United v Crystal Palace.
A repeat of the 1990 FA Cup Final, a game where a certain Alan Pardew lined up in midfield to face the might of the Red Devils and left with a runners-up medal.
Will he emerge from the May final with a winner’s medal?
The bookies don’t seem to think so.
Bodog has United as the odds-on favourite to win their 12th FA Cup and their first in a decade.
