“….the current Blues team is reminiscent of Manchester United” Reckons Steve Beauchampé.

I don’t think it ever occurred to Blues’ players that they might lose to Arsenal in the League Cup Final. Alex McLeish’s side really does not know when it’s beaten and while Sunday’s winner may have resulted from a misunderstanding in the Gunners’ defence, the frequency with which Blues salvage or win games with late goals is too great to be an accident. In this respect (and probably no other), the current Blues team is reminiscent of Manchester United.

On Sunday they were simply relentless. They chased, they closed down, denying Arsenal space and time, forcing them into areas of the pitch and into trajectories that they did not wish to go. Arsenal had the ball skills, the close control, the feints and dribbles, the twists and turns, but teams win games and Arsenal’s didn’t have the tactics. And by God, Blues wanted it: because a lifetime of waiting beats a trifling six years every time when it comes to the desire to win.

McLeish read the game perfectly, everything he tried came off; his players learnt their lines and carried out their roles to near perfection. Everyone played either great or good. They committed just nine fouls all match, and with all that tackling, on a wet surface! And it was Arsenal, in the form of goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny who committed the game’s most crass challenge, when his second minute lunge brought Lee Bowyer crashing to the ground in the penalty area. Saved from a straight red card by a linesman’s flag that was wrong! wrong! wrong! What was Szczesny thinking executing such a challenge?

And the winning goal… scored in front of the Blues fans and timed to perfection, with just long enough left to allow for a tense, masochistic final five or six minutes where cool heads and tactical nous were needed to keep Arsenal at bay, yet not too long for the ferment and fever pitch excitement levels in the stands to subside, as a winner clinched twenty minutes from time might have done.

Because this undoubtedly beats any promotion, Play-Off win, victory over the Villa…and the Leyland DAF and Auto Windscreen Trophy Finals over Tranmere and Carlisle (neither of which I attended) don’t even register in my story of the Blues!

I watched my first Birmingham City game on April 29th 1967, a 0-0 draw against Cardiff City. Since when, it’s been almost 44 years of hurt.

OK, there’ve been a few highlights along the way, not least the 2001 League Cup Final at Cardiff where we almost beat Liverpool, but for the most part it’s been more Fulham 1975 than that mythical Champions Ball the fans still sing about.

So the new Wembley was the 105th ground I’ve seen Blues play on and by some distance the biggest crowd I’ve seen them play in front of. The stadium was perhaps better inside than I’d expected, and my end of row seat in the top tier almost directly behind the net, placed almost the entire bowl within my field of vision.

Disappointing therefore that the middle tier is wholly given over to Club Wembley ticket holders. As so often at major finals, some seats remained empty, and while Arsenal fans occupied a small number of spaces, for the most part they were populated by neutrals. The visual impact is entirely negative; Upper and Lower tiers occupied by passionate supporters, sliced through by a swathe of dispassionate spectators, like unwanted guests who’ve gate crashed your private party and who now sit there, refusing to join in with the fun and games.

Persistent and increasingly heavy rain had tempered the pre-match atmosphere around the stadium (and with Arsenal’s followers mainly residing in London and the Home Counties they seemed mostly to travel straight to the ground). Despite the weather I took a pre-match stroll around the stadium. Massively underwhelming, it combines the worst elements of an office block with those of a supermarket and an out of town Retail Park. The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, with its dramatic setting beside the River Taff, knocks it into a cocked hat. Move away from the ground, and while Cardiff has the castle, Tiger Bay and the entire city centre within walking distance, Wembley has industrial parks, a plethora of take-away shops, office blocks and soulless chain hotels. What a place to put the national stadium!

Things didn’t look good (aesthetically or meteorologically). But just in time for kick-off the heavens relented, the once notorious Wembley pitch held up fine, Wenger didn’t whinge, his players didn’t try to dive or con the referee and my pre-match pessimism over the result proved without foundation. It’s a day I’ll not forget (at least until Alzheimer’s sets in) and, just before 6pm, somewhere in the maelstrom of 31,500 incredulous, wildly celebrating Blues fans, one joyous loon charged up and down the gangway of Block 540 screaming repeatedly: “We’ve won the cup! We’ve won the cup!!” It can get you like that.