Ten reasons to be cheerful about the FA Cup Final

1 It’s the year of the underdog, and to borrow from Ian Holloway, Saturday is woof day. We should be pleased about the snapping of the big clubs’ stranglehold on a competition they take less and less seriously.

2 Cardiff have managed to produce an FA Cup Final song that is not utterly terrible, merely deeply naff.

3 As one of the best groups of supporters in the country, Portsmouth’s loyal and vocal support deserve their day out. Maybe their most famous fan, John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood will get a commemorative tattoo, if there’s any space left on his body.

4 The "I love the Nineties" nostalgia trip that is Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Robbie Fowler up front for Cardiff.

5 After his impressive and long career, and a strange season in which he was linked with the England job then arrested after allegations of corruption (he has not been charged), Harry Redknapp deserves some silverware, surely.

6 Ditto David James, the Premier League’s best goalkeeper this season. It’s time to forgive him for those cream Liverpool "Spice Boy" suits from the 1996 Final – though we must never forget, obviously.

7 Let’s not overlook the merits of Dave Jones, either - one of British football’s most under-rated managers, with a decent line in dry irony.

8 The interesting debate about nationality, borders, the relationship between politics and sport generated by the issue of whether a Welsh club should represent England in the Uefa Cup. Which took a Frenchman, Uefa president Michel Platini, to solve.

9 The schadenfreude of Cardiff’s long journey down the M4, followed by the inevitable sitting in traffic on the A406 North Circular Road: England’s revenge for those years when clubs schlepped all the way to the splendid Millennium Stadium to enjoy a brilliant atmosphere that did not quite make up for the reality that escaping the city limits within four hours of the final whistle was possible only by helicopter.

10 It can’t be worse than last year’s Final, can it?