Blues must be ruthless, says Lampard

FA Cup Final: Portsmouth v Chelsea

Victory over Avram Grant’s Pompey side in the FA Cup final at Wembley today will see Chelsea become only the seventh side to achieve the coveted domestic double.

Chelsea were crowned Premier League champions last Sunday and it could get even better for Carlo Ancelotti and his side if they can overcome a Portsmouth side that has defied the odds to reach the final.

Relegated to the Championship, a surprise win over Tottenham in the semi-finals has given former Chelsea boss Avram Grant the chance to pull off one of the biggest cup final shocks in history.

The scenario is not lost on Lampard, who knows that any complacency could wreck their double dream and send Chelsea’s England contingent off to the World Cup in a deeply depressed mood.

“We don’t want it to be a fairytale that goes all the way for Portsmouth, we have to be ruthless,” said Lampard.

“To win the league was a huge thing for us last week. We got that job done but we knew the season wasn’t over.

“We saw Portsmouth against Spurs in the semi-final and we’ve seen them have a very spirited end to the season, even with the difficult circumstances.

“What better way to go to the World Cup than doing the double?

“But I would hate to go there having missed out on the double. Mentally if I went away and we’d lost that would be the freshest thing in the mind and it would be horrible.

“We are determined to finish the job and it won’t be as easy as some people have made out. I also have a lot of sympathy with Portsmouth.

“I think they’ve handled themselves very well, particularly Avram Grant, who we know well.

“He’s handled himself brilliantly and everyone has seen that. It’s not been easy circumstances and everyone has taken to them a bit this year – in very adverse circumstances they have held their heads high and managed to get to Wembley.

“But the double is huge and has never been done in our history. We really want to do it. I grew up always knowing the big teams that had done the double in the 70s and 80s, so if we do it, it will go down as the best year in the club’s history.”

Lampard’s England colleague, left-back Ashley Cole, is bidding to become the first player to win the trophy six times.

Cole’s first FA Cup final victory came with Arsenal against Chelsea in 2002 before retaining the trophy against Southampton the following year and then scoring in the 2005 penalty shoot-out win over Manchester United.

He then moved to Chelsea and was part of the team that defeated United in the first final at the new Wembley. Last season he won his fifth final and moved into the record books as Chelsea defeated Everton 2-1.

Now he is on the brink of making it six final successes and Lampard believes the defender deserves all the plaudits.

“It is an amazing achievement and to win it that many times would set him out as the most successful FA Cup player ever and he deserves that,” added Lampard.

Meanwhile Chelsea right-back Branislav Ivanovic insists he has no bitterness towards Portsmouth coach Grant. Ivanovic hardly figured for Chelsea during Grant’s brief time as manager of the Blues and the Serbia defender, who was named in the PFA Premier League team of the year, admits it was the most difficult time of his career.

He is confident of overcoming a minor knee injury to play against Grant’s Portsmouth team.

Ivanovic was signed from Lokomotiv Moscow for £9 million in January 2008 but injury kept him sidelined for much of the season as Grant, who took over from axed Jose Mourinho four months earlier, kept Chelsea in the hunt for the domestic league title and the Champions League. But when he was fully fit, he found himself isolated under Grant’s regime.

“I have no ill-feeling towards Avram but at that moment I was really angry,” said Ivanovic.

“You think you deserve to play but a manager’s job is to find the players he wants to play. Of course I was very angry. Maybe I was thinking [about it] but that was two years ago. Things have changed now. It wasn’t in just one day, it changed step by step.”