Chelsea once again will face Liverpool in a final, with an opportunity for redemption following February's Carabao Cup defeat on penalties at Wembley. The Blues will take on Jurgen Klopp's side looking to claim their third trophy of the season to add to the UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup, while the Reds will be hoping to lift a second trophy of a possible four.
It's the third FA Cup final in as many years that Chelsea have qualified for, and on paper the most difficult task the Blues have faced having lost to Arsenal and Leicester City in the previous two years. A far from easy match for Thomas Tuchel's men who have ensured they have more than the top four to play for in the final weeks of the season.
Having claimed the League Cup, Liverpool still harbour ambitions of raising the Champions League and Premier League trophies in addition to the FA Cup. Despite the Reds' asserting their position in the league over Chelsea with an 11-point gap, the two teams are yet to be separated by 90 minutes in three occasions this term. It's no wonder that Tuchel is undaunted by Liverpool's quadruple ambitions.
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“I don’t care about their other titles,” Tuchel told Sky Sports after the FA Cup win over Crystal Palace. “Of course, we lost a [Carabao Cup] final [to Liverpool]. We gave everything in that final, as you know, until the very last penalty. We were unlucky and lost.
“We want to turn things around, but it will not give us the Carabao Cup title back. We were in the FA Cup final last season and we’re here again, it means unbelievably a lot to us. We will be well-prepared against one of the strongest teams in the world who are on an outstanding form given their results. So, it will be a tough one. We will try to make life hard for them.”
That said, Klopp appears to agree with his countryman and 'couldn't care less' over the pressures of performing in multiple competitions. Though he concedes that Liverpool's victory in the FA Cup semi-final almost proves the difficulty of competing on four fronts.
The 54-year-old German said: “I think a game like today [vs Man City] shows it even more how unlikely it is to do something like that.
“We went through against City and in three days we play again against Manchester United, who with their three points and the results from Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, the fight for the Champions League is open for all of the three.
“Then in a few days we play Everton... then we play Villarreal, (which) will not be a friendly game. Then Newcastle United and all these kind of things, so it’s just incredibly intense and it is really unlikely the team will win all the games,” he added.
“But I couldn’t care less, to be honest. It is just, let’s go for it, let’s try to win the next game and then we will see how we can recover between now and then.”
Of course there is an emphasis on the one-off nature of the cup final, any team can win on their day but the sides will enter the tie on slightly different terms to how they entered their last final together. Both teams had the start of the Champions League knockout rounds to navigate but the Blues' schedule had already been impacted by travelling to Abu Dhabi for their Club World Cup campaign as they went a month without Premier League football. The team was rotated game by game as Chelsea played in five competitions in as many games.
Come May, it will be Liverpool whose attention has been more divided with no room to slip up in the Champions League against Villarreal given their exploits against Real Madrid, or in the league where they trail Manchester City by a single point.
Another tense and tight game awaits with Tuchel acknolwedging in his press conference that while another trophy would be important for how the end of the season is perceived, lucky will also play it's role. A win over Liverpool will definitely vindicate Chelsea's season.
He said: "We cannot promise. All we can do now is to be well prepared because it will be another hard fight given the quality and run of form from Liverpool. It's unbelievably difficult to beat them but this is what a cup final is about. It's about winning and we need to try to find a way to beat them.
"We'll need a bit of luck and everything at the top level we can have. Of course, it makes the season that much sweeter if you have at the end of the season a final that you can win. But as we all know in a final, two compete against each other and we experienced last season and this season that sometimes you give your everything and it's not enough. We will try to find a way and if we do this, then we deserve it. And we want to deserve it."
