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Saints Have More Cup Final Experience Than You Would Think !

The talk before the game has suggested that a key factor for Manchester United will be their superior experience in Cup Finals, but is the gulf as big as the media would have you believe.

It cannot be denied that United have plenty of big game experience in their squad, certainly it would appear a lot more than Saints and indeed they won the FA Cup at Wembley last season, so most of their team could have fairly recent games n a final under their belts.

But Saints have more than their share of players who have appeared in and won cup finals.

Fraser Forster has played in several Scottish Cup Finals for Celtic, Cedric Soares has played in and won two Taca De Portugal finals, firstly with Academica and then Sporting Lisbon and then of course there is the little matter of the European Championship Final last summer.

In the centre of defence Yoshida and Jack Stephens have not played in a cup final, but Martin Caceres was on the bench for Barcelona's Champions League final back in 2008/09 and has appeared in Italian cup finals.

Ryan Bertrand of course famously made his European debut in Chelsea's Champions League final win in 2012.

In the midfield Steven Davis has plenty of cup finals under his belt due to his time at Rangers, five domestic finals plus a UEFA Cup final.

Dusan Tadic has been involved in a couple of Serbian Cup Finals and Nathan Redmond a play off final at Wembley for Norwich.

Saints also have several players who have been involved in cup finals but for one reason or another did not play, Shane Long was cup tied when Hull reached the FA Cup final three years ago and both Oriol Romeu ( Chelsea & Barcelona) and Pierre Emile Hojbjerg( Bayern Munich) were squad players for those clubs in various finals.

Of course we should not forget Virgil Van Dyke who has experience at Celtic.

Claude Puel has cup final experience both as a player and as a manager.

So although our experience is not as great as Manchester United's, we have a squad with more experience than you would think and across all competitions.

Enough to mean that we should not be overawed on the day, but not enough to make the players blase about Sunday's game and that could be the key factor.

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