Arsenal and Chelsea set to meet in FA Cup final of differences

Both Mikel Arteta and Frank Lampard have been privately speaking of coming up with something different to gain the key advantage in this game. It will be for a cup final the like we have never seen

While both Mikel Arteta and Frank Lampard have spent the week coming up with “something different” for Saturday’s FA Cup final, a tactical twist to turn the game, the players that have been to the stage before can’t help noticing so much different about the occasion.

There isn’t the usual routine, the usual excitement. There aren’t even tickets to get for family and friends for the big day out. It would be a shame if this was any player’s only experience of an FA Cup final, having had the rare privilege of getting there.

We all are by now well used to the changed circumstances of the coronavirus crisis, but the altered staging of the English game’s showpiece occasion only emphasises it anew, and that is worth recognising. This is the football competition with more history than almost any other in the world, but it’s never seen anything like this. It is set to be the most distinctively-staged FA Cup final since the “white horse final” of 1923. Whereas that became notorious for the number of fans who attended – an estimated 300,000 that prompted discussion in the House of Commons and led to the introduction of new safety measures – this will be the opposite.

‘Abide with me’ will be played, but only via a recorded version by Emeli Sande, and that… to no one other than people working on the day. There won’t be the fireworks, there won’t be the pageantry. There won’t be the historic posterity of the game taking place in May. That’s actually something it shares with the white horse final, since that took place in April too. This is the first to take place outside May since 1970.

That game 50 years ago ended up being Chelsea’s first ever FA Cup, which some of the more historically-minded people around the club have been keen to point out. Just as that match against Leeds United was one between two clubs that had never won the trophy before, this is a match between two managers that have never won any trophy before.

It is why – in a line that has now become well-worn and indicative of the modern FA Cup – this final is about more than that grandiose old cup. It is about the future of these teams, and these managers. Victory would be seen as a landmark moment, the trophy itself a signpost of a new era.

It is why, whatever about the circumstances of the occasion, this will be quite a pure FA Cup final in terms of the match itself. It is almost old-fashioned in that sense. Both will be pouring everything into it. It does mean an awful lot to Arsenal, beyond victory. They badly need to get back into Europe for financial reasons.

That is even more important to the future of this team, in terms of who they can sign.

It is why both managers have spent the last week intensely trying to come up with new angles. In that sense, it is quite a pure tactical battle between coaches too, and one with a twist.

Arteta and Lampard are managers with progressive and attacking ideas of the game, where they take the matches to opposition, but both have been better served against big-six rivals this season with more calculated approaches. You only have to look at the semi-finals for evidence of that.

It means this match might be engaging and tactical rather than entertaining and open-ended.

Appropriately, it feels a player who has played for both teams will be key: David Luiz. Chelsea know how chaotic he can be, but also how good he can be, especially in the kind of back three that Arteta has implemented.

So will we see the David Luiz against Manchester City in the league, or the David Luiz against Manchester City in the semi-final? His role could dictate the entire tie.

Both managers have other problems to solve, and balances to strike. Will Chelsea look to take the risk of getting at that fragile Arsenal backline by swarming them, or would that leave their own fragile backline overly susceptible to the pace of Arteta’s front three?

This is what the managers have been trying to work out. Both have been privately speaking of coming up with something different. It will be for a cup final that has never been so publicly different.