There’ll be no need for change strips today. Both sides will be turning out in next season’s gear, which means that one shirt will be synonymous with failure before the campaign has even started. I’m no marketing expert, the world has long passed me by, and furthermore am simple folk, but that can’t be ideal, surely? Anyway, greater minds than mine have done the maths, so here’s Arsenal’s bespoke effort for today’s big game ...

Other matches between Arsenal and Chelsea have been staged. Here are six of the finest, not counting anything that’s happened in the last ten years, for reasons that will become all too apparent when you click.

Related: The Joy of Six: Arsenal and Chelsea showdowns | Scott Murray

Those two previous Arsenal-Chelsea finals, then. Here’s what happened in 2002 ...

Related: FA Cup: Arsenal 2 - 0 Chelsea

Related: Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea: 2017 FA Cup final – as it happened

The 1876 FA Cup final replay, then. That’s the one, you’ll remember, in which the legendary Arthur Kinnaird, captain of Old Etonians, picked up an injury and was forced to take over in goal, his sore tootsies a major factor in an easy 3-0 victory for Wanderers. We mention that particular game only because the attendance at the Kennington Oval that day, 1,500, currently stands as the lowest in the entire history of the FA Cup final. For reasons we really don’t need to explain, that record will be wiped from the record books at 5.31pm this afternoon.

So yes, this fan-free occasion is going to be a strange one indeed. But then FA Cup finals aren’t supposed to feel normal. Would it have felt normal when Arsenal won their first FA Cup in 1930, the Graf Zeppelin hovering over Wembley, the 776-foot hydrogen-filled behemoth dipping its nose to acknowledge King George V? Would it have seemed normal when Chelsea won their first FA Cup in woozy 1970 technicolor, after the sort of stramash at Old Trafford that wouldn’t be tolerated these days, not even outside the Belt & Haymaker on a hot Sunday afternoon? It hardly seemed like an everyday occurrence last year, either, did it, when Manchester City were making venison sausages out of Watford, and there were 85,854 people in attendance for that one, for goodness sake. You’re meant to feel uneasy, a little bit queasy, that’s the effect big sporting occasions have. They feel surreal at the best of times. Abnormality is the whole point. So let’s go with it.

Continue reading...