Chelsea, Arsenal clash in cup final

After 41 grueling weeks, the English club football finally reached the climax of the season with the FA Cup final.

London sides Chelsea and Arsenal will go head-to-head at Wembley tonight as Antonio Conte looks to add a second trophy to an impressive first season as manager of the Blues.

Arsenal boss Arsenal Wenger will be hoping a win will secure at least another year at the club. The French manager can become the first manager in English footballing history to win seven FA Cups, but to do so he must stop league champions from completing the double.

Having failed to make the Champions League for the first time in 20 years, Arsenal need to win the FA Cup to add a silver lining to what has been a gloomy season around the Emirates.

Conte insisted after his Chelsea side lifted the Premier League trophy that it was Arsenal who would start as favourites but few neutral observers - or bookmakers - would agree with his assessment.

With Arsenal’s defensive numbers on the slide and Chelsea having effectively been resting since winning the May 12, it would seem the champions will start the final on top.
However in what could be his final game in charge Wenger will surely have a plan to further cement his place in English footballing history.

After missing out on the top-four for the first time in 20 years, Arsenal have the opportunity to go some way to rescuing what’s been a disappointing campaign by securing what would be a record-breaking 13th FA Cup.

Since deploying three at the back as an exercise in damage limitation at the Emirates when they were 3-0 down, Chelsea have proven extremely clinical as they’ve had a 32 wins, two draws and four defeats in all competitions since that seminal defeat in North London.

The Blues eased past lower-league sides Peterborough, Brentford and Wolves in the early stages of the Cup before being faced with tougher challenges in the last two rounds.

They broke down a typically stubborn Jose Mourinho side at the Bridge before outclassing Spurs in the semis, despite neither Hazard nor Costa starting at Wembley, though that duo were decisive in getting the Blues over the line when they were introduced as substitutes around the hour mark.

In the league, the Blues have impressed against their nearest rivals after that defeat at Arsenal and against Liverpool prior to that, going five wins, a draw and two loses against fellow top-six sides, though the fact that they kept only one clean sheet in these 10 games will give the Gunners some encouragement.

However, as so often seems to be the case, Wenger’s men have struggled against the big teams, winning once and lose five out of eight matches against teams above them in the league this term, though they did manage to net in all but one of these games.

They did have some success in the semi-finals of this competition as they managed to see off Man City and interestingly that win came after Wenger had himself introduced three at the back after a string of disappointing results.

Whilst that formation would in theory have made his side tougher to break down here, Wenger is struggling to find three central defenders who are able to line up after Koscielny was sent off against Everton and is suspended as a result, whilst Gabriel was stretchered off in the same game and Mustafi is also a doubt with suspected concussion after a blow to the head in the win over Sunderland. That leaves the so far impressive Rob
Holding and Per Mertesacker, who made his first appearance of the season when he came off the bench against Everton after recovering from a serious knee injury.

The club captain’s likely presence in the starting line-up will hardly fill Gunners’ fans with confidence, nor will their recent record against Chelsea. The win at the Emirates early on in the campaign ended a run of seven defeats in nine winless clashes with Chelsea for Wenger (excluding the Community Shield victory in 2015), and normal order was restored with the Blues winning 3-1 at the Bridge in February. What’s more, as far as the FA Cup is concerned, Wigan’s 2013 triumph over Man City was the only instance since 2001/02 of the underdogs coming out on top in finals since 2000/01.