One player who will not be involved on Sunday, of course, is the cup-tied striker, Jo. In the last eight or nine days he has made it quite clear the reasons for him rediscovering the form that prompted Moyes to track him closely some 12 months ago.

The reasons are the same as those which many players over the years have experienced at Goodison Park – great supporters, a real warmth about the club and more recently in particular, a fantastic team spirit that has been engendered by Moyes.

Jo’s absence will be tempered presumably by the availability of Louis Saha who looked in fine fettle in his substitute appearance against Wigan and of course the history of the FA Cup is famous for creating magical moments. What greater story could there be this weekend than Saha putting his former club out of the FA Cup?

Another possible, but unlikely, fairy-tale could see James Vaughan make a vital contribution to the cause, although with only a couple of reserve team outings under his belt after such a long injury lay-off, the semi-final may have come just too early for him.

And bearing in mind the bad luck Vaughan has suffered since turning professional, I’m sure no-one would want to risk a recurrence of what was obviously a very nasty injury.

All in all, I think Everton and their fans can make their first journey to the new Wembley stadium full of optimism, if not confidence, and that’s not a bad place to be.

The last time we beat Manchester United at Wembley, we were the underdogs, just as we had been in the semi-final, but we had great confidence ourselves, regardless of what anyone else was saying. I think this current Everton squad should have a similar attitude going into the weekend.

FOR many years, Everton’s away support has been absolutely magnificent and the allocation for tickets at every away ground is always sold out.

I remember travelling to Upton Park twice in a week a couple of years ago and the away end was full on both occasions.

Nevertheless I think it’s idiotic and unnecessary to expect Everton and United supporters to travel to what is a notoriously difficult place to get to and from for a late afternoon kick-off the day before the start of a new working week, especially when there are two London teams contesting the other semi-final.

I haven’t actually seen anywhere any reasons to explain why such a decision was made, but since the draw was made it was quite clear that the FA had got the two games the wrong way round and it surely wouldn’t have been a major difficulty to reverse the fixtures.