Switch the Final

Great win by Arsenal over their closest London rivals Tottenham in the semifinal of the Carling Cup last night, 3-1 on the night and 5-3 on aggregate. Now the Gunners face Chelsea in the final on Sunday 25 February at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

The Millennium ’s a great football and rugby venue, but with two London teams in the final why not switch the game to Twickenham instead of dragging 80,000 fans to Wales and back on a Sunday afternoon. They’ve known since early January that the semifinals would be made up of three London teams, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham and one from just west of London, Wycombe, and it was nailed on Chelsea would beat Wycombe.

Cardiff’s renowned for being a bit of a nightmare for fans to get in and out of on big match days and simple logic says Twickenham’s not being used that weekend, it holds around 85,000 so lets save that army of fans from clogging the roads and trains and have the game in West London. Everyone’s always banging on about global warming and not using cars, well here’s a straight forward way to cut a lot of emissions and energy use on one day. They’ll never do it though.

The last time Arsenal played Chelsea in a final at the Millennium was the 2002 FA Cup Final which they won 2-0. Here’s a clip of Ray ‘Pele from Romford’ Parlour’s opening goal.