Tomorrow is the first major cup final of the season, and also Wigan’s first ever cup final, in what will (hopefully) be the last league cup final hosted at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. Whilst Wigan will just be pleased at reaching a cup final in their first season in the premiership, Man United will be after a win just to salvage something from their season, if they lose it will be no trophies in the past two seasons, and just one trophy in the last three (and that was an easy FA Cup win over Millwall).
Under Sir Alex Ferguson, United have only ever won the League Cup once, and that was in 1992, and this is possibly the best chance they could ever have of winning it again, the only real problems they have for this game is who to pick in central midfield. After Alan Smiths horrific injury last weekend, and with Scholes out for the season they will probably push Rio Ferdinand into the middle. Rio has looked relatively impressive here, although sometimes he has not been amazingly convincing.
Wigan don’t appear to have any injury concerns for the match, although they haven’t won in 6 games, although I don’t really think this will affect how they perform tomorrow.
I think that Wigan will be really up for this match, and could cause United problems, however if both Rooney and Van Nistelrooy play (which they are likely to), then I don’t really see Wigan having much of a chance. My Prediction: 3-1 Manchester United
3-1, bah. I predict 4-0
Rooney (2), Ronaldo and Saha sounds likely