FA Cup Final Betting Preview

Liverpool and West Ham both expect to have no injury absentees in their clash in Saturday's FA Cup final at the Millennium Stadium. The Reds' Spanish midfielder Xabi Alonso picked up an ankle injury during his side's 3-1 win at Portsmouth but an x-ray revealed that no lasting damage was done, while the Hammers' duo, Dean Ashton and Matt Etherington, are recovering rapidly from a hamstring and ankle injury respectively. This should be a cracking game and while Pool are the better side and boast a superb record in this competition, I expect this to be a lot tighter than the betting suggests - Liverpool are a top-priced 4/6 in the match result betting, and West Ham can be backed at odds of 5/1 to win within 90 minutes at VCBet Rafa Benitez's men deserve to be favourites, don't get me wrong, but form books and the such like tend to go hurtling out of the window when it comes to cup finals, and this match will be a full-blooded affair. It's been a long, hard season but the adrenaline which is induced by the magnitude of the occasion will temporarily alleviate the onset of fatigue for both teams, so we can expect high-octane, end-to-end stuff. Liverpool come into this match on the back of an unbeaten run of eleven games in all competitions - including when beating West Ham 2-1 at the Boleyn Ground in a Premiership fixture last month - and they've certainly had no easy path to this final, having eliminated Chelsea and Man Utd in the last two rounds. The Hammers have won six of their last eleven matches in all competitions and come here on the back of a confidence-boosting beating of Spurs last weekend, ensuring they finished a highly creditable ninth in the Premiership. As such, both sides will be going into this match in the right frame of mind. Although I don't expect the Reds to win in the manner of 4/6 shots, it's hard to get away from their overall quality, and, with all due respect to West Ham, the silverware at stake is likely to be Merseyside bound. All things considered, I reckon the best bet is to opt for draw/Liverpool in the double result market, about which Blue Square go 7/2, since both sides will no doubt be playing with a degree of caution, especially leading up to the interval. Interestingly, Djibril Cisse has been the last goalscorer in five of Liverpool's last nine matches and, at 7/1 withStan James, it's well worth chancing that the Frenchman will repeat the dose on Saturday.