Underdogs Arsenal open scoring through Theo Walcott. Chelsea come from behind to win 2-1, with Didier Drogba muscling off a centre-back to score the winner. At least the nightmare journey back from Cardiff was spared Gooners after defeat in today’s FA Cup semi-final.

The team selection was a bit of a mystery. Arsenal’s two best players – the ones that stand apart from the rest as having that extra bit of class – are the captain and Andrey Arshavin. Yet, the latter was on the bench. If he was fit enough to be on the bench, presumably he was fit enough to start. Instead, Wenger decided to play it cautious, with a central midfield three to match Chelsea’s. In a sense the teams were like a mirror with both employing an identical formation.

Despite Arsene Wenger not being much of a tactician, his team started well. The first period of the opening half was very much theirs. You could forgive him the decision not to start Arshavin when Theo Walcott – by a street Arsenal’s best player on the day – put them ahead.

But slowly, the team started to fall into old bad habits. The midfield struggled to find each other with the ball, and possession was handed all too easily to their opponents. Confidence suddenly looked shot and I was relieved that the interval was reached with only one goal conceded.

What Chelsea’s goals revealed was what we always suspected. Wenger’s back up defensive options are not good enough to win trophies when tested. Who knows whether he could really have afforded one, but the purchase of a brick sh*thouse central defender instead of utility man Mikael Silvestre, who has shown he is a liability in more than one position, could probably have prevented the second goal. But even so, the crimes of Emmanuel Eboue and Lukas Fabianski were worse than Silvestre’s inability to equal Drogba’s muscle.

Chelsea did not play that well. Neither did Arsenal. It was a scrappy kind of game on a disgrace of a pitch. It will be quickly forgotten as a football match, in contrast to the 2007 Carling Cup Final when the Gunners were a lot slicker, at least until they came within sight of goal.

Wenger’s team gifted Chelsea their win. The manager by not picking the player that has made the team tick and the players with individual mistakes that handed the initiative to their opponents. When Arsenal beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in November, the back five was Almunia, Sagna, Djourou, Gallas and Clichy. There is a case to argue Toure deserves a place in a first choice line-up, but Wenger should clear out Fabianski, Eboue and Silvestre pronto. Kiaran Gibbs is young and acquitted himself well enough.

Are these big game defeats actually shaping the team up to triumph as Arsenal’s did back in the early 1970s after losing two successive cup finals? Next season will tell us more, but that’s it for this one. Anyone who thinks this team is capable of winning the Champions League after watching the performance against Chelsea is a supreme optimist. They simply haven’t got enough nous.

I reflected on the way home that it is only a game. As a supporter one has the right to feel a bit down about the way your team being knocked out of the Cup, but it’s sport, and sport only. Just over 20 years ago, on the evening after an FA Cup semi-final had kicked off in Sheffield, there were a large number of families going through the kind of emotions that make a football result seem pretty damned trivial. Our team lost, but we all got home alive, safe and well. We take it for granted, but even so, we should be thankful.

And with a view to the visit to Anfield on Tuesday night, I picked up an envelope between turnstiles A and B before the match. Inside were two tickets for the game at Liverpool that someone had obviously dropped on their way in. It looks as if the pair were part of a bigger allocation and given to the person who managed to then lose them. There is a name on the front of the envelope, so if you have lost a pair of tickets, get in touch by email – [email protected] - and come and pick them up. If you can’t tell me the name on the envelope, then obviously they are not yours.