Arsenal Football Club, FA Cup Winners 2020 - surreal, but nice

There’s a bit in the film Notting Hill where Hugh Grant’s character completely understates the feeling of meeting Julia Roberts’ Hollywood superstar as “surreal, but nice” and that’s how I feel about what happened at Wembley on Saturday. 

I wrote on this here site a couple of weeks ago about how football behind closed doors doesn’t feel right for those of us who go and attend matches on a regular basis. The experience of watching from the armchair doesn’t get close the feelings generated inside a football stadium. You’re happy when you win, annoyed when you lose, but the emotions and the rush of being there in person are absent. Saturday was no different in one way, but totally different in another. 

I watched the game at home with my two boys while my wife went out of the house on the basis she couldn’t bear to be around during the game. Abide With Me, gimmicky though it was (and the FA would be no doubt surprised to find some things just don’t need a gimmick) got to me as usual and the tears were there as normal.

I wonder if people who haven’t been to FA Cup Final’s get that feeling from the traditional pre-match hymn? It gets me every time when we’re playing in the Cup Final and this was the first time we’ve done so without me being there since 1979 when I was a couple of weeks old. I’d spent the rest of the day leading up to kick-off not really feeling the excitement and the tension of Arsenal playing such a massive game. It was an odd feeling of disconnect.

I did get angry at the sight of the rag-tag bunch representing The Arsenal turning up at Wembley looking mostly like they’d just finished primary school – someone at the club needs to get the smartness back in the Arsenal players off the pitch.

There were no real surprises in Arteta’s starting XI. There was probably no real surprise when Chelsea went 1-0 up early on either, with our defence and midfield looking like strangers in the first 15 minutes or so. In the opening period only Maitland-Niles and Pepe looked like they were really up for the battle. Both men then played a key role in what became, for me, the turning point in the match – the disallowed goal.

Ainsley was the player given offside just before Pepe smashed in his thunderbolt but the move that led to it, and the finish itself, seemed to give belief to everyone in the side. Apart from the run by Pulisic that ended with his injury there was never any genuine threat from Chelsea in the remainder of the match.

I’ve seen loads of whingeing online and in the press about Kovacic being sent-off unjustly so I’ll deal with that now. Kovacic’s first booking was a clear yellow card. He then made a series of fouls, small trips and niggly little ankle taps, that almost certainly built up in the mind of the referee. At full speed the tackle for which he eventually got his second yellow looks for all the world a booking. Slowed down it appears less so.

Maybe Granit Xhaka over-egged the pain a bit but how many times have we been stuffed by that kind of thing? Maybe it was our time to get something our way – remember Jorginho not being sent-off at our place and then equalising seconds later in December?

I do. And even if you did shed a tear for Kovacic let’s look at Azpilicueta not being sent-off for the penalty incident. Or maybe Barkley going over the ball on Nketiah and getting away with it. Marcos Alonso yet again spent the entire game making horrendous and snidey fouls on Arsenal players but going unpunished. Keep the crocodile tears and get lost.

Aubameyang didn’t look convincing as he stood over the penalty. The finish showed otherwise and no goalkeeper would get near a penalty put so close to the post with that power.

At 1-1 Arsenal got right on top and I thought Nicolas Pepe was outstanding. For me this was far and away his best game for Arsenal and he was my man of the match. It was great to see him running at people and not just coming inside all the time. He was brilliantly supported down that side of the pitch by Hector Bellerin who also saved his best performance of the season for the Cup Final.

Bellerin’s run in the build up to the second goal was superb and what can you say about the finish? I never realised Aubameyang was capable of scoring that kind of goal. It was, quite simply, a brilliant goal and one of the best you will ever see in an FA Cup Final. I was off the sofa and screaming with joy when he put it in the net.

After that Arsenal managed the game superbly and Sokratis made a tremendous contribution with his positional play as Pedro ran in to the area, allowing Emi Martinez to collect the ball without Chelsea pressure close by. I have no idea why Kolasinac was brought on for Tierney but fortunately it didn’t matter.

When the final whistle blew I admit I cried again. I grabbed my boys and we celebrated together. It was brilliant. Arsenal had won the FA Cup yet again. You can’t bottle the feeling you get from Arsenal winning a trophy. But it still wasn’t quite right for me. I’m still really happy today and will bask in the glow of silverware for a while to come, but because we couldn’t be at Wembley I feel like there is something missing. 

I haven’t got the permanent smile etched on my face that I would have normally today. The experience of being there wasn’t available to any of us. This will, I hope, be a unique feeling and experience. I want to see Arsenal win trophy after trophy. I don’t necessarily want it to be with me sitting at home and having to listen to Danny Murphy and a fake crowd soundtrack.

Despite it all I want to finish this post on the right note. We’ve had a terrible season, perhaps even a terrible 17 months or so since the end of Unai Emery’s first year came to such a terrible ending, even before Baku happened.

There have been green shoots under Arteta but for every Liverpool or Man City game where the players have performed well there has been an Aston Villa or a Brighton when they’ve been awful. Perhaps because it’s all so surreal at the moment I do feel that the win on Saturday has set Arsenal up now though.

Mikel Arteta is an Arsenal manager with a trophy behind him already, the first since George Graham to win something in his first season. He is clearly shipping out egos who won’t fit in to what he wants. We may be a long way from thinking of a challenge for the Premier League, but El Boss knows what he wants.

The Europa League qualification gives more money to keep/attract the better players we need. I feel optimistic for the first time in a long time. After the 1987 Littlewoods Cup win the massed Arsenal fans sang “Arsenal are back” over and over again at Wembley.

We came back from an early goal to win that game with two goals from our talisman too. The parallels are there – the boss winning in his first year, a club hoping for a resurgence, a crop of young Arsenal players potentially bursting through (9 of the match day squad on Saturday played in the Arsenal youth setup) and even one nil down, two one up.

Let’s look forward to next season with real hope.