West Ham booked their place in the FA Cup final after a fine Marlon Harewood strike sent the past Boro at Villa Park today.

I only saw the second half but was wrapped when West Ham, got the goal, did you see Aprdews little dance for the fans?

The win also means they will get qualification to the UEFA Cup next year as the other finalists, Liverpool, will be playing in the Champions League.

Well done West Ham!! Hope they can go on now and win the whole thing!!!!

Yeh, well dont to them.
There would be a lot of teams id be typing diff material if we lost to them.
We lost it in the first half by not scoring really, that simple.
Dunno why Mac keeps teaming Hassle an Yak together, it just doesnt work.
Dunno what planet maccarone was on when he arrived.

We just played terrible in 2nd half.
That said, the Hammers are there, well done, we couldnt have lost to a nicer club tbh, their supporters deserve this.
Pool fans r happy coz they think they have a good result from that. So 'Seize the Day' Hammers.

Good luck in the final

GO HAMMERS!!!!

I think Boro's amount of fixtures this season is catching up with their fans, there seemed to be a lot of empty seats in the Boro section of the stadium.

I think ive wasted two hours of my life watching that

Well looks like West Ham will have to rest some of their key players for the final in their last Premeirship game.

Congrats West Ham topping off a great season...
I would have actually prefered Boro to be in the final,i think they are easier to play against than West Ham....

we meet at Upton Park on the 26th of April too

I'm so happy I could breakdance.

all true West Ham fans have grown up expecting the worst and Boro nearly equalised in the dying seconds.

but now we're in the UEFA Cup for definite, I can relax a little bit.

we'll go to the final as complete underdogs with nothing to lose and that suits me fine. maybe we can pull off a shock.

come on you Irons.

well done Hammers, you've done a wonderful thing.. but why were these matches played in birmingham and manchester?? Is it because there is only one match without a return match???

this is a tradition in the FA Cup going back decades, whereby all semi-finals were played at neutral grounds.

recently, it had become the trend to play the semi-finals at the same ground as the final, whether that was Wembley or the Milennium Stadium, but I hated that, cos a) it de-valued the experince of the final and b) travel costs were immense for Cardiff.

it used to always be Villa Park and Hillsborough, but Old Trafford is such a fantastic stadium that it seems to make sense.

Jono your wrong when you say the amount of fixtures is catching up with the fans. Our fans a dreadful simple as that

Committment - zero
loyalty - zero

We must have the worst fans in the premiership by quite some way. It was disgusting the empty seats yesterday i stood at Villa Park in amazement at how many tickets we didnt sell, pathetic.

I stood in amazement at the Basle game where a laughable 24,000 turned up! More fool the ones who didnt go.

I know financely it may be difficult to follow the team around the country and Europe but i'm bloudy 18 year old and ok i have had my season ticket bought for me previous seasons but i've paid fro everything myself this year - All the home cup games League cup, Fa Cup (bar the coventry one) UEFA Cup, Rome and Bucharest, Villa Park yesterday, all the home games and believe me i dont earn much.

Unfortunately passionate, dedicated supporters are hard to come by in Boro, it's something that gets me so wound up, i just wish everyone showed the same love as i do for the club

Anyway thats my rant of the week

The match well once again it was more heart break and more tears shed don't want to say much more about it but walking out of Villa Park yesterday and watching the hammers celebrating was all a bit too much for me - Yakubu has turned from superstar to superflop in a month!!

and what a chance you had to send the match into extra time at the death there yesterday . Middlesborough will have to go some on Thursday to stop their season disintigrating all within 5 days .

our only route back in europe is to win the UEFA Cup, will be a disaster if we're not in europe next year

Yea if that chance had fallen to probably any other Boro player on the park it would have been put away, Riggott wasnt it that stuffed it up?

Yea any other player and it would of hit the back of the net!

Exept Yak, who apparently has forgotten what he's on the pitch for.
Roch shoulda put hassle through, but fell over an scuffed it.

I agree with u $enior on the supporter status. Unfortunately theyve alwys been like that.
No commitment, not all of em obviously, but the majority are. my older brother is a point in question, took his dog for a walk @half time in 1st leg of Basle saying, 'thats it now, theyll put loads past us'.

At least there are still a few supporters (like yourself) who do truly care.

I disagree with you both on this, and my reasons are as follows, Middlesbrough is not a big town population around 130,000 the catchment area outside of middlesbrough is not a great one,
places like billingham have strong sunderland ties, going the other way north yorkshire are spoilt for choice Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, are all within two hrs drive,i worked in Thirsk for years and not one of the lads i worked with supported the Boro even though we are the closest premier league side.
Although i know that a fair few supporters are very loyal in parts of North Yorkshire.
Middlesbrough draws nearly all of it`s support from the Boro and surrounding areas ect. Employment is not great on Teesside and this is not an excuse it is a fact, that it is one of the lowest paid areas in England, there for, the commitment to a side which continuously blows hot and cold is felt within such a small population.Sunderland and Newcastle supporters coninuously bang on about how well supported they are and how poor the Boro are, they each have a population of about 260,000 (Sunderland slightly more ) and their catchment areas where they draw fans from outside of their city`s are massive compared to Boro`s.
Passionate dedicated supporters are not hard to come by in Boro $enior mate, my mam my uncle and my auntie are season ticket holders have been most of their lives and they are all well into their seventys, and there are plenty more like them.
Even if i lived in Boro there is no way i could go to every game not with the prices the way they are.
When I was single and had no commitments i was their every week, home and away and have some great memories .
The fact that Boro have had a ridiculous amount of games recentley must be taking it `s toll on the supporters , for a lot of people it was probably a toss up between the fa cup semi final or the uefa cup semi final. Any way just been reading the Gazette on line and less than 1000 tickets left for the game tomorrow , and half of them are tickets being made available to home fans because tickets have been returned.$enior we could do with more dedicated Fans like you "the more the better" but all as i`m saying is if we had the same population as our neighbours then we would have 50,000 crowds no problem , but there is no way we will ever do it in reality.

COME ON BORO!

Well done the Hammers! Shame such a key player in Hayden Mullins will probably miss out on the biggest game of his life.

I have to say I think Liverpool will be worse off without Garcia.

nah, because they can just bring in Crouch whereas West Ham have to bring in someone like Carl Fletcher

But I thought Mullins was crap!

arsewash.

just because a player is quietly going about his business being an effective lynchpin in a team exceeding everyone's expectations, without wearing 6 earings, an alice band and rolling around on the ground every time his haircut is touched, doesn't mean he's "crap".

Hayden Mullins has been our most consisitent player this season, excelling in a role that never gets the credit it deserves - patrolling the region between back four and the rest of the attacking midfield, mopping up the bits and pieces.