Silva has already tasted FA Cup glory once in 2011 and wants more of the same this season, but says if City aren’t at their best, those hopes could end on Saturday evening.
With the Blues a dozen points off the top in the league, the FA Cup has become the most realistic chance of silverware and a win against David Flitcroft’s men will leave City just 90 minutes away from a second final in three years.
“This is another chance to get to Wembley and it is very important that we win this game,” said Silva. “The league is very, very difficult now. But we can reach the Cup Final, so we have to focus on this game.
“We are now only one game away from going back to Wembley again and on paper we should win beat Barnsley, but they are in the quarter-final because they deserve to be, so we will have to be very cautious and try to win the game.
Wembley is an amazing place to play football and I have been lucky enough to have already played there. Now I want to get to another final
...David Silva...
The FA Cup has long been renowned as the best domestic club competition in the world with a history of giant-killing feats by lower league sides and the Blues have suffered at the hands of so-called lesser teams on numerous occasions in the not-too-distant past.
Silva admits he’s not experienced anything like the FA Cup before, adding: “The Copa del Rey is similar to the FA Cup but not as interesting.
“In Spain it is much more difficult for the smaller teams to rise to the top, but we have seen that in England smaller teams can get to the finals, such as Bradford City in the Capital One Cup.
“The nearest I came to playing in a giant-killing game was when I was at Valencia. We were a big team, but we won the cup and beat Barcelona, who were the biggest team – it’s not quite the same but it still was something of a shock at the time.”
