BLUE WATCH: Create another bit of history

Jan 23 2008 by Mark O'Brien, Liverpool Daily Post

WELL then, here goes – Wembley or bust.

It’s difficult to remember an Everton game that’s been so hotly anticipated in a long time.

Even derbies don’t have people desperately scrambling around for tickets like this – so let’s all be grateful for the degree of apathy has resulted in Chelsea returning a couple of thousand and allowing more Toffees to pack into Goodison for the hottest show in town.

It’s a bit of a sad reflection of the way that the usual suspects dominate competitions and have their appetite for the game dulled by endless, often tedious, Champions League matches, that a finely poised semi-final second leg seems to be viewed as something of a chore by many of the Stamford Bridge faithful.

Or maybe it’s more down to the fact that the Londoners, by all accounts, appear to view the tie as something of a formality.

Granted, Avram Grant’s team looked streets ahead of the Blues in the first leg until Jon Obi-Mikel’s unlucky sending-off, and even then still managed to triumph with only 10 men.

That was a game though, that with all due respect to the skipper, featured Phil Neville on the right wing.

And while Everton will be weakened by the loss of Joseph Yobo and Ayegbeni Yakubu to the African Nations’ Cup, they welcome back key midfielders in the shape of Leon Osman and, most importantly, Mikel Arteta.

The little Spaniard, for all his ability, is sometimes accused of not really stepping up and imposing himself against the top opposition.

This is his chance – and he’ll never get a better one – to put that to bed.

During the away game, and shorn of most of their ball players, David Moyes’s men struggled to keep hold of possession and made an often plodding Chelsea look good.

That can’t be the case tonight. Just as in derby games, all the talk beforehand has been about the atmosphere and passion and desire, but inevitably it’s the team who are capable of protecting the ball and keeping their cool at the key moments that comes out on top.

Everton mustn’t get carried away with the occasion; they need to forget that they are starting a goal down and approach the match as if they are all square.

After all, if playing a mad formation or bombarding the opposition penalty area with high balls from the off was the best way to score a goal, we would surely start every game that way.

The players just need to do the things they are good at – the things that have pushed them upwards to a deserved fourth place in the table and onwards in the Carling and UEFA Cups.

The feeling before the first leg was that we just wanted to come back to Goodison with the game still alive, and that is very much the case.

Obviously we would have been a touch more confident if Shaun Wright-Phillips hadn’t forced Joleon Lescott into that late own goal a fortnight ago, but real glory only comes on the back of a bit of adversity.

Take the Bayern Munich game that has been getting mentioned this week – if the Germans hadn’t taken the lead would people still regard it as the best game Goodison has ever witnessed?

Nothing’s for certain, and Chelsea rightly start as favourites tonight, but they take Everton lightly at their peril.

After all, it’s no fluke that the Blues are fourth in the league table and contesting for a place in the final of this competition.

They really can do this. They can go out there tonight and produce another piece of history.

Come on you Blues.