A GOAL worthy to win any FA Cup final, but was this cup final worth the goal? Chelsea’s splendidly worked winner, in which Didier Drogba played a crucial part in the build-up as well as scoring it himself, was in some way a glorious anticlimax to a match that seemed doomed to end in the irrelevant horror of penalty kicks.

Chelsea, to be fair to them, had brought off another swift, well-calibrated move in the first half of this largely uneventful game, when Paulo Ferreira, on 31 minutes, swept into attack, accepting a pass from John Obi Mikel, enabling Frank Lampard to have a shot which was held on the ground by the big United goalkeeper, Holland’s Edwin van der Sar.

United, too, had their sporadic moments, mostly involving the passing of Paul Scholes, the dangerous incisiveness of Wayne Rooney, sacrificed too long as a single spearhead, and Ryan Giggs, who might well have scored in the second half if his legs had been a little younger. The truth is, however, that this final illustrated the current crisis in English football; what you might call the nemesis of monopoly.

Like it or not, there are currently only four clubs which truly count, two of them being on show yesterday at Wembley, the others of course being Arsenal, whose season disappointed, and Liverpool, engaged on Wednesday in the European Cup final in Athens against Milan.

This means that inevitably there will be a heavy accumulation of fixtures for the majority of these four when the end of the season comes, with all the resulting paradoxes. You wonder, even if they have now gone off with the FA Cup, how sensible it was of Chelsea and their manger Jose Mourinho to take part with a full team in that relic of the past, the Football League, and now the Carling Cup. Chelsea got all the way to the final in Cardiff, in which they only just squeaked home against an Arsenal side largely composed of reserves. True, Arsenal did not last the pace either in the Premiership or the FA Cup, but this had much to do with injuries to their key attackers Thierry Henry and Robin van Persie.

A dismal concomitant of this fixture glut could be seen in the relegation dogfight at the bottom of the Premiership. We know all about West Ham and Carlos Tevez, which may yet end in spectacular judgements.

But what of the way Liverpool strode out at Fulham, desperate for points to escape the drop, at Craven Cottage, with no fewer than nine changes from the team which days earlier had beaten Chelsea to qualify for the final of the European Cup? Fulham won with a spectacularly worked goal, thus taking the three points which saved them from disaster.

But the impression remained that a full Liverpool side would simply have walked away with the win. Hardly fair to the likes of Sheffield United, Wigan and Charlton.

Analysing the problem, the reason for the weariness we saw at Wembley yesterday, is a great deal easier than finding a solution. It might help if the Premiership were to enforce the long-standing rule that every club should field a full-strength side in each and every of its matches; that might have avoided the fiasco which we saw at Fulham. But with such a massive European prize in view, you might imagine Liverpool being content to field that virtual reserve side and go on to pay a massive fine.

There were occasional effervescent moments in this final, a number of them contributed by the sometimes dazzling Dutch winger Arjen Robben when he came on as substitute in the second half. Bravely ready to take on opponents in numbers, he once darted in spectacular style between two earthbound defenders. But by the end, Robben himself was tired and gave away the ball which could have ended with Chelsea conceding a vital goal.

Meanwhile, it becomes clearer than ever that even those top four teams essentially need two full sides to do duty during a protracted season, which makes greater and greater demands on their players’ physiques.