“I think it’s not a pitch,” said Wenger. “When you build a stadium with that kind of money and you still have no pitch, it’s laughable. The quality of the pitch is a disgrace.”

It’s fairly normal for the losing team to find an excuse. When it’s Arsene Wenger, you take it for granted he will find something to blame the result on. However, he has a point about the pitch. Chelsea had to play on the same pitch, so it’s not a valid enough excuse for losing, but the pitch did look a mess.

Before the game the groundsman had been instructed by the press not to speak to Setanta representatives about the standard of the pitch. The FA know there’s a problem, they’ve dragged two teams down from the North-West for a Sunday afternoon kick-off, and the pitch is a fucking state.

We know all about bad pitches, we’ve had a hard time with ours, but we fixed it. What kind of joke is it that they’ve spent £800 million on a ground which sees a few football games a year, yet they still can’t get the pitch right for those few occasions??

If the pitch was bad yesterday, can you imagine the state it’s going to be in now? I’m talking about this as an pre-emptive excuse for losing, rather voicing frustration that we won’t (Everton included) be able to play as well as we want to.

Another grumble, whilst I’m at it, did you see how many empty seats there were at Wembley yesterday? The fans were back in their seats for the restart but the corporate seats with the optimum view were empty for a good ten minutes of the second half. As if any more proof was needed that 40,000 seats were being given by the FA to a load of people who couldn’t care less about the match.

Ok, roll on 4pm!