Arsenal, Arsenal again and again. FA Cup thoroughbreds and winners again.

Arsenal - FA Cup winners supreme.

It was in the script wasn't it? It had to happen. It was in the stars. It was fate, destiny, and if it had turned out differently then we might have wondered why. But once again Arsenal, for what now seems the umpteenth time in recent years, won the FA Cup because Chelsea's thoughts seemed to be a million miles away from Wembley Stadium. This was a Chelsea at their most pathetic, lacklustre and spineless against an Arsenal side at their best in the 2017 FA Cup Final and it does go a long way in explaining how they were so emphatically beaten by an Arsenal side who were completely and technically outstanding, a side whose collective ethos particularly after this game should never be questioned.

The question now, in the light of Arsenal's latest Cup Final victory, is whether their long standing and accomplished manager Arsene Wenger will still be in charge at the Emirates Stadium next season. His record, after 20 years in North London, is undeniably and hugely impressive but the doubts will now remain about the foreseeable future for Wenger. He looks like a man who although outwardly happy, may privately be thinking that this is far as he can take Arsenal.

The last season has been a painfully tempestuous one for the Frenchman and when Arsenal began to fall away disturbingly towards the end of the season Wenger's face and body language told its own story. More haunted and persecuted than ever before he looked like a man who would quite happily stretch out his tired body on a Caribbean hammock, read Proust and then gently swig a bottle of French vintage wine for as long as he possibly could.

But the decision that now faces this amiable and multi- lingual man is clear. Does he gamble with the possibility of signing on for another year at Arsenal or does he go with his gut feeling and just bow out at the top? These are curious times at Arsenal because it does feel as if both Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal fans are now at loggerheads with each other without knowing what to do for the best.  One party just wants Wenger to go now and the rest are still undecided. There is a deeply unsettling air of indecision which for the long term, has to be addressed if Arsenal are to ever find a clearing in the forest.

We will know on Wednesday which hand of cards the Frenchman has come down on. Will it be the jack of hearts or the king of diamonds? At the moment there is a cloak and dagger secrecy about the Arsenal hierarchy but now is the time for Wenger to put us all out of our misery. This is the worst kept secret since the last worst kept secret. Wenger may not be a gambling man and the chances are that poker was never his game anyway. But whatever is going through this highly intellectual man's mind there is surely a part of him that is petrified in case the Arsenal fans revolt en masse and nobody wins anything.

Still whatever happens the fact remains that Wenger has been one of the most successful and highly esteemed managers in the Premier League. Thin as a bamboo stick, gaunt and haggard at times, Wenger has always looked a man in desperate need of several plates of fish and chips plus a dozen pizzas for good measure. In recent times the face has looked more and more sunken and bony, the hair as grey as a ghost. In fact there are times when it looks as if somebody has thrown a sheet over his head such has been the strain and stress that he's been forced to endure this season.

Anyway here was Wenger back in what has effectively become his second home in recent years. After Arsenal had thrashed Aston Villa a couple of years ago and finally beat Hull a year earlier it seemed natural to assume that Chelsea would be the proverbial piece of cake ready to be gobbled down for tea or an early 5.30 supper. But this has never been the case for Wenger does things his way because he remains a man of honour and principle and would never leave anybody hanging  in the dark.

And so it was that the Wembley Stadium arch greeted its London soul mates in this meatiest of London derbiies. Arsenal had already beaten Chelsea in the Cup Final 15 years ago and now handed out another dose of the same medicine to their London neighbours. Arsenal had won the FA Cup for a record breaking 13th time and a startling seventh time for Arsene Wenger so the likelihood was that we would witness another one of those meaty, ferociously competitive Cup Finals and London derbies with nothing given nor taken. So it proved.

But right from the kick off it was Arsenal who immediately laid down the ground rules for this Cup Final. In roughly the first minute of this game, Arsenal received possession of the ball and never ever really gave the ball back to Chelsea at any time during the match. They then set in motion those beautiful passing movements that has so often given a gloss finish to their football. Once the red shirts took charge of those important midfield areas, the passing was coated with that finest tin of emulsion paint. The passes flowed and floated across the lush green Wembley acres, the links and connections were faultless and most of the Arsenal players seemed to form the most harmonious of playing agreements. It was the sweetest football, the most cultured of football and football played in the way nature intended.

In the heart of the Arsenal midfield there was Aaron Ramsey, now a firmly established Arsenal regular, a quick, artful, scheming, probing, busy and livewire player who built up the most idyllic relationship with Mesut Ozil and a wonderfully mature Alex Oxlade Chamberlain. Both Ramsey and Ozil were forever teasing out delicate angles and spaces for the likes of Alexis Sanchez to run into. This was an Arsenal side carrying out the very specific instructions of a manager who knew exactly what this game meant to Arsene Wenger.

For the first time in quite a while Oxlade Chamberlain, whose father Mark had so regularly terrorised defences for both England and Stoke City, began to find his feet again. Oxlade Chamberlain owns the cleverest of feet, a nimble and nippy winger drifting across the pitch almost unobtrusively before cutting in from the flanks and carving out decisive openings for Sanchez. This was Oxlade Chamberlain's day and once he'd  imposed his authority on the Cup Final the others rallied together and picked their passes with an almost arrogant ease.

Now it was that Arsenal took charge of the game. After only seven minutes Arsenal broke through with the opening goal. At first everybody in the Chelsea defence seemed to freeze as Sanchez looked as if he'd handled a ball in the throes of an attack. But no whistle followed from the referee's lips, the ball was moved forward into a gaping space in the penalty area and the little Chilean smuggled his way into the area and guided the ball past the helpless Chelsea keeper Courtois for Arsenal's opening first goal.

From that point onwards Arsenal laid seige to the Chelsea with a flurry of goal scoring openings that could so easily have embarrassed Chelsea after only half an hour. Frantic shots were kicked off the line, the post was struck and Chelsea manager Antonio Conte must have thought the Premier League title may just as well have been an optical illusion. It could have been three or four but then the red storm subsided and Chelsea inched their way back into the game slowly and methodically.

By half time Chelsea looked groggier than ever and the sluggishness and slovenliness that had so characterised Chelsea's first half performance began to seep away in the second half. By then Per Mertersacker, who should have been an Arsenal liability was instead their eternal saviour. Mertersacker, slower than a tortoise in the eyes of his critics was now revived and revitalised and all of that awkwardness on the ball had now been banished for ever.

For the opening stages of the second half Metersacker, without ever bearing comparison with a Tony Adams, Steve Bould or Frank Mclintock still tackled and held firm with all the assurance of a centre half twice his age. Chelsea, to their credit, did attempt to climb their way back through the ropes after the incessant Arsenal first half battering but this seemed a match too far for Chelsea  They were never really in tune with the day and found it almost impossible to find their bearings. They were nervous and tentative, weary and cautious and the overriding impression was that Chelsea had already enjoyed what they may have considered a much happier afternoon last weekend.

Even the likes of N'Golo Kante in the middle of Chelsea's midfield and, without a doubt one of the best players of the season, was neither here nor there. Frequently losing the ball when winning the ball back, Kante struggled to keep up with the frenetic pace of the game. Kante's influence on the game had vanished out of sight and Chelsea were almost totally devoid of any of the hypnotic rhythms that had almost left the rest of the Premier League gasping in its slipstream.

When Pedro and Matic attempted something out of the ordinary the ball was caught up in the most chaotic mass of feet before dropping to another red shirt. Hard as though Chelsea huffed and puffed this was a leaden footed and laborious performance from the West Londoners. Even the masterful subtlety and cleverness of Eden Hazard was desperately missing as he briefly hinted at spells of dribbling with the ball at speed and then realised that even he was human and flawed. He did very occasionally send tremors through the Arsenal defence but then ran into a red brick wall that never looked like crumbling.

But with twenty minutes Chelsea, quite miraculously, found the equaliser Diego Costa turning sharply and expertly in the area to slice the ball into the net. But even then Costa kept up that tiresome sequence of moody facial snarls and sneers that reminded you of the seven year old kid who was never picked for the first team. With that dark, bristly face, Costa spent the rest of the second half in a private anguish, staring aghast at the referee, moaning, groaning, incensed with the whole world and niggly irascible. We remain grateful that Costa was not on the winning side. Even Alonso, normally so productive and emotionally involved, looked unwilling to haul Chelsea back into the match.

No sooner than Chelsea had equalised then Arsenal headed straight back to the Chelsea penalty area. It reminded you of that brilliant 1979 FA Cup Final when Terry Neill's Arsenal thought they'd wrapped up a victory with minutes to spare. But on another hot Wembley day, the imperious Liam Brady wriggled his way through a static Manchester United defence and a combination of Graham Rix and David Price presented Alan Sunderland with a last gasp winner after United had pulled the game back to 2-2.

Now though Arsenal surged back towards the penalty area and after a fast breaking Arsenal move broke through the Chelsea defence, a firmly drilled cross found Aaron Ramsey's head and the ball went like a bullet into the Chelsea net. Chelsea were now, quite literally, out on their feet, shocked into submission and nowhere to go. The FA Cup had returned to Arsenal after a two year absence. Perhaps they were polishing the Cup  just for this one moment in their gilded history.

For those who cherish those good old fashioned Cup Finals there was still a lump in the throat and a romantic yearning for the way things used to be. We still smile inwardly at the great TV build up to the Cup Final. There were the coaches following the teams on their journey to the old Wembley Stadium, the joky interviews with the players at breakfast time, the comic gags from Jimmy Tarbuck, the formations and tactics cunningly employed by the two Cup Final teams.  BBC and ITV had a wonderful monopoly on the magic of the FA Cup but now the Cup Final kick off time seems to getting later and later. We fear that one day that some bright spark will move the game to a Thursday afternoon or shortly before midnight on Monday perhaps. Maybe we'll be asked to keep Wednesday breakfast time clear at some point in the future.

And there ends the 2016-17 season. In the end Chelsea seemed to walk away with the Premier League. Arsenal were destined to win the FA Cup, Jose Mourinho kept up that endlessly infuriating bear with a sore head impersonation. But hey Jose, you're still box office entertainment and when Manchester United lifted the Europa Cup against Ajax even Mourinho's face obliged with a grudging grin, a concession to brief happiness. All in all the general standard once again lived up to its usual expectations and the quality of the game is infinitely preferable to some of the more unfortunate stodginess of the 1970s. We all know that the game from now on will always be played on snooker table baize green rather than the allotment sites of Derby's old Baseball Ground or the mudheaps of Old Trafford and Anfield. Oh what a relief. Now I must look for my Cup Final rosette or rattle. What a game.