Manchester United vs Chelsea – 2007 FA Cup Final Preview

Where will you be on 19th May, 2007? History will be in the making at Wembley, whichever way you want to look at it.

Manchester United will take on Chelsea at Wembley in a clash of wills, strength and skills with a dash of class thrown in from either side.

Both sides are evenly matched and will have an equal chance to win, although injuries could take their toll. With Manchester United’s form this season and Chelsea’s never-say-die attitude, the final promises to be a bloody and glorious classic.

There’s plenty of time – around 5 weeks – before the final, so instead of waiting, let’s look at how both teams can beat each other. You’re welcome to add your thoughts below.

How can Chelsea beat Manchester United?

Tactically, Jose Mourinho seems to have improved this season. His biggest test will come against Rafa Benitez in the Champions League semifinals but till now, Chelsea have only benefited from his tactical changes.

Chelsea also have a couple of players returning from injury, which will help Chelsea be fresher than Manchester United at Wembley.

In a one-off game with such evenly matched sides it’s difficult to see who will come out on top. The game 10 days before at Stamford Bridge should give us a clue, but there are no obvious weaknesses that Chelsea can exploit.

Chelsea will look to test van der Sar from long range in the hopes that he will make the same mistake (as he made against Roma and Portsmouth) again. Joe Cole could prove invaluable with his ability to break through defences.

The key factors for Chelsea will be their physical strength, their ability to keep playing at full-tilt for the whole game and the fact that mentally they might have an edge over Manchester United.

How can Manchester United beat Chelsea?

You can argue that Chelsea have a hold over United but as Liverpool showed at Anfield (albeit playing against a weakened Chelsea), Manchester United can beat Chelsea in a toe-to-toe game if they are mentally strong and play a tight game.

Manchester United’s key strengths are their pace and quality in attack and over the course of the season Ronaldo, Rooney, Carrick, Giggs, Scholes and Saha have created a fearsome attack. Add Smith to the mix and Ole coming in from the bench and you have plenty to play with.

However, Ferguson will know that Manchester United’s best bet is to rely on Rooney and Ronaldo, not Smith and Solskjaer. Giggs will have to rely on his skills more than anything else but it is Scholes and Carrick that will have the most to do – up against Lampard and Ballack, these two will have to turn in a performance better than that against Chelsea at Old Trafford.

Carrick has improved for Manchester United but he’ll need to step things up a few gears and put in those crunching tackles – denying Lampard and Ballack any space is a difficult job but for Carrick it will be absolutely crucial that he gets it right.

It’ll be interesting to see how Chelsea deal with Scholes and Ronaldo. Knowing Mourinho he wont have either of them man-marked (although Scholes could be), but Manchester United will have to ensure that they can pass the ball around and force Chelsea on the back foot instead of letting Joe Cole and Michael Ballack pull the strings.

Your Verdict

How can Chelsea beat Manchester United?

How can Manchester United beat Chelsea?

Let me know what you think.

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source : soccerlens.com

VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

[ Image: via CollegiateTimes.com, a photograph of students taking cover in a French class. ]

At least 33 people were killed today, including a gunman, and at least 27 were injured, at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA. It was the deadliest mass civilian shooting in US history (NYT reg-free link). Much of the attack took place inside the school’s science and engineering building, Norris Hall. A statement from school administration is here: Link.

The DC Metblog has two related posts: one, two.

Many survivors, friends, and relatives are now trying to track down missing VA Tech students via Facebook (Canada.com story link).

The Wired blog 27b Stroke 6 has posted a cellphone video of the university campus, during the shooting — you can hear gunshots going off in the background. [Update, 230PM PT: Jamal Albarghouti, the VA Tech student who shot the cellphone video, is on CNN and mentions that he shot the footage on a Nokia N70.]

27B Stroke 6 has also posted a personal account by the university’s webmaster:

Bruce Harper, the Virginia Tech webmaster, flipped on his Pro-95 scanner during the unfolding shooting tragedy in Blacksburg this morning. A few hours later, he emailed this inside account of how multiple police agencies responded to the crisis to a DC-area scanner enthusiasts group. We’re copying it verbatim below (email addresses have been redacted).

Excerpt:

At 1:30 PM -0400 4/16/07, XXXXXXXXX wrote:

>I have nothing to add. I’m watching the coverage on TV. At least one

>lister at Scan-DC has a vt.edu email address, Bruce Harper

>. He’s a railfan who scans the ATCS information.

>

>Harper, are you OK?

Other than being devastated by all this, yes, thanks. It has been a zoo and
the Media Building (where I’m located) is across campus from where all this
took place. But between having a scanner on my desk (and being info central
for the building) and having to scramble to keep updates on the web site, it
has been intense. I expect I’ll decompress later this evening.

I have a Pro-95 that has most of the local frequencies plugged into it and
it definitely has gotten a workout. This was a multiple-agency response and
there is little interoperability — but the police still got the job done.
Virginia Tech Police Department was and is lead agency in the whole event,
with Blacksburg PD right there with them. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s
Department is also involved and the Virginia State Police. Give all the
various dispatchers credit for a great job, as they were the linchpins that
kept all the communications straight between all the agencies. There was a
massive response from all the local rescue squads, let by the student-run
Virginia Tech Rescue Squad. A triage area was set up adjacent to Norris Hall
and ambulances shuttled in and out of the area to transport victims to
Montgomery Regional Hospital, the Carillion New River Valley Medical Center,
and to hospitals in the Roanoke Valley. Carillion’s helicopters and the
State Police helicopters were unable to be used for transport due to the
high winds we are experiencing.

Full post here: Link. More updates from around the web at 27B Stroke 6, here.

And anti-electronic-gaming prohibitionist kookwad Jack Thompson wastes no time before thrusting himself in front of television cameras to blame the tragedy on you-know-what: Link.

Update, 240PM PT: I’m sure “Copycat Effect” author Loren Coleman would have something to say about the following exchange, which occurred just now on CNN’s “Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer:

[Gregg MCCrary, Former FBI Special Agent, Fredericksburg, VA]: There is a contagion factor. There is an increased likelihood of more incidents like this happening in the coming weeks. The most important take-home message right now is to be sensitive to this issue…

[Wolf Blitzer] Are you talking about a copycat factor? (…)

[McCrary] Yes. Because there are people who are already on the edge, and events like this can put them over the edge.

Update, 253PM PT: Eyewitness reports are beginning to surface on blogs, myspaces and livejournals, and in local Blacksburg, VA newspapers. Snip from a roundup on Planet Blacksburg:

[ Ruiqi Zhang, a computer engineering major, who was in Norris 205 this morning ]

“I was sitting in class when we heard loud popping noises a couple rooms down… The teacher and a student went into the hallway and rushed back in and told everybody to get down. We put a table against the door and had a few students holding down the door. The gunman tried to shoulder his way in and when he saw that he couldn’t, he put two shots through the door it was the scariest moment of my life…”

Link to more first-person accounts on Planet Blacksburg.

Some online journal accounts are gathered at this Washington Post blog entry: Link. (via DC metblogs)

Photos have been showing up throughout the day on Flickr. Here’s a set by user and1headache which shows law enforcement attempting to secure the site: Link. See also the VA Tech Shooting pool. Look also for photos tagged VA Tech, Virginia Tech, or Norris Hall. Collegiate Times has this photo gallery of related images, and this map of the shooting site.

And an odd footnote: this week (specifically, Friday, April 20) marks the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

sourc: boingboing.net