Southampton manager Gordon Strachan believes his side can win the FA Cup final for the first time since 1976.
It would be one of the shocks of the season if Southampton beat Arsenal in the FA Cup final on Saturday. But we can do it, and I see no reason to be too despondent about our 6-1 defeat at Highbury last Wednesday.
With neither team selecting its strongest line-up, that ”rehearsal” confirmed what I and many others already knew about the strength in depth of the two squads: Arsenal’s pool of top-class players is considerably stronger than ours. It also confirmed Southampton’s need to avoid being too open. In that respect, this match — in which Arsenal scored with their first shot after nine minutes and hit four more in the space of 17 minutes — was as crazy as any I have seen this season.
The match statistics tell their own story. Arsenal had 13 goal attempts, while we had 12. And we beat them on the corner count (nine against six). But I am not bemoaning our luck in terms of finishing because, to me, it is also a question of class.
Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this on Wednesday was the 25m lob with which Robert Pires completed his hat-trick. Arsenal is always liable to produce goals of that quality, and it is important not to think you can play them at their own attacking game.
This Southampton team has developed over the season and I think we are now on a par with most premiership sides in attacking ability. But it is a different story with Arsenal. There is no shame in conceding this, not least because we are hardly alone in recognising that one has to be more pragmatic and disciplined against opposition of this calibre. Even Manchester United made one or two adjustments to their style of play in their recent 2-2 draw at Highbury.
This has created something of a dilemma for me in the build-up to the cup final. On the one hand, I am conscious of the importance of not spoiling the match as a spectacle with a tactical approach liable to bore the pants off everybody. On the other hand, we want to give ourselves the best chance of winning.
There is little pressure on Southampton to lift the trophy. We were not expected to reach the final and have already clinched a place in the Uefa Cup. But we won’t just relax and enjoy the occasion. People involved in professional football are programmed to try to win and, no matter what managers and players might say about the thrill of a cup final appearance, this is hardly borne out at the final whistle by the expression on the faces of the men on the losing side.
The level of concentration on winning probably helps explain why a lot of managers and players who have participated in cup finals struggle to remember much about them. I can recall little about the finals in which I was involved as a player — not even Aberdeen’s triumph over Real Madrid in the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup and Manchester United’s success against Everton in the FA Cup two years later. Perhaps my worst cup final experience was when Aberdeen surprisingly lost to Dundee United in a Scottish League Cup final replay in 1980. But my most vivid memories of it concern the unbearable physical pain I experienced on the journey home on the team coach, when I caught my finger in the toilet door; and the fact that the manager, Alex Ferguson, in a tormented world of his own through missing out on his first trophy, not once asking me how I was.
It is going to hurt if we lose to Arsenal, though, for obvious reasons, the pain of defeat would be even more pronounced for Arsenal following their disappointment at being pipped by Manchester United in the championship race. Arsène Wenger seems convinced that Arsenal is the better team. I find it impossible to confirm or deny that assessment. My own view is simply that while Arsenal was the superior team over the first half of the season, United have been better over the second part.
It is the same when I am asked to compare the two teams’ superb strikers, Thierry Henry and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Though they are quite different in their approach to the game, they are on a par with each other as far as I am concerned.
John Giles, the former Manchester United and Leeds United midfielder, recently suggested that Henry tends to get more spectacular goals than Van Nistelrooy. I was reminded of this when watching that Highbury draw. On one occasion, when Pires burst past Henry with the ball, the latter, instead of moving closer to the goal — as I expected — went in the opposite direction. Henry was looking for the cut-back and the chance for a long-range shot.
In many ways, Henry epitomises the extent to which Arsenal’s playing culture has changed under Wenger. I know very little about the man. Whenever our teams have faced each other, the closest we have ever come to a conversation was when I was Coventry manager and inadvertently strayed into his technical area. ”You are in my box,” he said. I made a joke of it — ”I don’t want to be in your box,” I replied — and that was it.
However, his ability has been plain for all to see through the attacking football of his teams. If any team have emphasised how the standards of physical power and athleticism have improved, it is Arsenal. The pace and power with which they break forward are awesome — and the same applies to their technical ability.
However, I feel we have a reasonable chance of beating them if we produce the form that we are capable of. One obvious reason is the absence of such dominating Arsenal figures as Sol Campbell because of suspension and Patrick Vieira through injury. No team would find it easy to compensate for the loss of players of that stature.
True, their absence did not seem to make much difference to Arsenal against us last week. But then the other thing for our players to bear in mind is that both were in the Arsenal team when we played the Gunners at home earlier in the season — and we won 3-2. —