I will not be glued to the TV to watch two sworn enemies go head to head for the Simod Cup, oh sorry, Carling Cup. And I will not be listening to it on the radio.

I will not be watching live text updates on the BBC (who actually updates that by the way? It must take an anorak in a cubicle to update such a thing!). I will be avoiding the game like the plague.

Of course I would love to have seen my team, West Ham by the way, playing at Wembley. I can still feel the hangover following our defeat in the penalty shoot out against Liverpool from a few years ago. That was at least a proper Cup final!

'All kidding aside, I think that the game will be a cracker, sure to have more yellow cards than goals, more bruising tackles than rampaging runs'


The Hammers are moving upwards nicely thank you (just getting that in there now) knowing that fans of my London neighbours will be about to make a retaliatory attack. We are, of course, ahead of the White Hart Lane gang by five points with a game in hand in case your wondering, and of course only financial backing keeps us from being ahead of our west London friends.

All kidding aside, I think that the game will be a cracker, sure to have more yellow cards than goals, more bruising tackles than rampaging runs, so in that respect it could hopefully turn into a real blood and thunder final that is something that we have missed for a while.

I watched the FA Cup Final last season and I was bored rigid. After the first 119 minutes of seemingly heartless football Didier Drogba put us all out of our misery and I was left thinking “Well that’s two hours of my life that I can’t get back”.

It’s only my upbringing and years of Hammers support that prevents me from being able to bring myself to stare at the TV screen in a pub in East London. After all, the signs are there that it should be one hell of a match.

Here are some facts: Chelsea are the better team, but at least Juande Ramos’s side are fun to watch (on six occasions this season six or more goals have been scored in their fixtures). In an ideal world, whoever does lose will do so in a particularly cruel way, either an own goal or a penalty shoot-out miss would do me.

In the end I could always catch the highlights and avoid the score in a manner of that hilarious Likely Lads episode (maybe the final will also be called off in the end?) and then just try to work out who to support and who to boo. So in that respect it simply comes down to this: Is it Chelsea or Spurs who I dislike the most? And for the life of me I can’t decide!