Chelsea v Liverpool: All eyes on FA Cup final unless you support Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest or York City

That the world’s most famous cup competition has been shown only on terrestrial television this season is cause for celebration but it does mean Sky are parking their tanks on its lawn. Even BT are bringing an armoured moped.

Nothing is scared these days, least of all Cup final day.

The weekend Premier League programme has respectfully been shifted to Sunday – due deference not always shown in recent years – but Sky have still scheduled a game which will overlap with events at Wembley because they can.

Fans of Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest unable to get a ticket today will have to choose between the closing minutes of their Championship play-off semi-final and the FA Cup final and that is just wrong. For them, Abide With Me has got no chance.

Those two clubs are playing at the proper time for a big Saturday game, 3pm, whilst the Cup final is again shunted into its now normal early evening slot.

Also kicking off at 3pm live on television are York City, and although a BT-screened Conference North play-off semi-final at Brackley Town is unlikely to make a dent on the viewing figures, it is still no way to treat a grand old institution. In fairness, the clubs were given the option to play tomorrow but only the Minsterment were keen.

Sadly, the old girl has been run down for so many years it is no longer a surprise. If only it had a Champions League qualification spot – and in a couple of years a fifth one might become available to England more often than not – winning a great competition might once more become more valuable than being the fourth (or fifth) best in the league. If only.

So now the FA Cup is not in of itself a Holy Grail, it has to fit into a bigger narrative, and fortunately for Liverpool, this year it does.

The chances of Jurgen Klopp’s side winning English football’s first quadruple are fading given how Manchester City have kept their foot down in the Premier League title race since Liverpool slipped up at home to Tottenham Hotspur but their fans do not have to cast their minds back too far to know you should never give up hope until the final whistle. The margins between the two best teams in the country, perhaps even Europe (although Real Madrid will have something to say about that), are so tight, it does not take much.

Regardless, a cup treble of the already-banked League Cup, FA Cup and European Cup is still in the offing.

It would be some achievement, albeit also diluted in these days of super squads.

It is a sign Liverpool now have one that they are at last treating this competition seriously, having never previously got past the fifth round under Klopp.

Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea have always been willing and able to take it seriously – they are looking for a seventh FA Cup of the millennium, as many as Liverpool have ever won – but it has not been kind to them recently.

They could break a record today as the first club to lose three consecutive finals having been beaten by Arsenal and, more surprisingly, Leicester City.

Tomorrow their women are also at Wembley hunting a fourth double in seven years and second in a row, against Manchester City. It is not just the men’s game which is being monopolised.

European champions 12 months ago, problems are following Chelsea’s men around now as they try to resolve ownership of the club. Yesterday met with stories which appeared to catch manager Thomas Tuchel on the hop from Romelu Lukaku’s agent talking about trying to get his client out of the club, something the Belgian angrily responded to on Instagram.

As he limped off at Elland Road on Wednesday after Dan James thrust a set of studs into his leg, there appeared no chance of Mateo Kovacic playing today. Tuchel’s post-match instinct was to say it would take a “miracle” but yesterday he was not writing one off. N’Golo Kante is another midfield fitness doubt.

So even without Fabinho, Liverpool must be strong favourites, their squad having moved up a level since Luis Diaz reinforced their battery of forwards in January but as last year gleefully reminded us, in the FA Cup anything is possible.

Anything, it seems but a Yorkshire winner. Barnsley, Bradford City, Huddersfield Town, Sheffield United and The Wednesday all won it in its first 50 years, but it is exactly half a century since Yorkshire’s last success, courtesy of Leeds United.

Downgraded and devalued it might be, but that should still hurt.