FA Cup Final and end of Premier League season.

 FA Cup Final and end of Premier League season.

They finally clocked off at the factory gates yesterday evening and we had just witnessed the longest and most gruelling Premier League season of all time. In fact the whole season seemed to go on indefinitely without catching its breath at any point during the proceedings. Last November the whole of British football hung up its boots on the domestic front and concentrated on the World Cup in Qatar. Here was a temporary break, a logical pause, football delayed for a perfectly good reason and yet some of us knew that the sense of continuity inherent in any normal football season had been disrupted by a side show but was still a pleasant distraction.

But by the time all the final mathematics had been compiled and tears shed on heartbroken terraces around all the Premier League grounds, the survivors were still in excessive party mode and all had become abundantly clear. For a while the last game of a Premier League season is always accompanied by the grinding of nails on transistor radios , faces twisted with tension and anxiety while on the other side of town or at the other end of the country, the victors were dancing the bossa nova and the conga.

Of course Arsenal have played some of the most exquisite and breath taking football for all but the last month of the season. The fact they fell agonisingly short of winning the Premier League is more a testament to just how impressive they've been so consistently. Arsenal have just been a breath of  fresh air, a side of pretty and ornate designs, picturesque passing patterns and the kind of forward momentum that at times carved open opposition defences quite brutally and ruthlessly.

The mind goes back to the magisterial era of Arsene Wenger when new templates and mentalities were installed and training ground methods revolutionised in quite the most astonishing fashion. Suddenly the likes of Tony Adams, Steve Bould, Lee Dixon, Alan Smith, Ian Wright, the late and much missed David Rocastle were taught about completely different refuelling methods with a notable emphasis on rigorous dietary regimes, wine instead of lager for lunch or dinner and a whole assortment of healthy snacks.

But this season Mikel Arteta, once one of Arsenal's most elegant practitioners of the game as a player, has made the transition to management with almost delicious ease. Arsenal have seen off most of the opposition this season and in a sense were unlucky to blow up at the final furlongs of the season when it all looked as if this could have been one of Arsenal's greatest seasons in recent years. Then Pep Guardiola came along with Manchester City's familiar mechanics and dynamics. City won their third consecutive Premier League season, completing a notable hat-trick and reminding us of their impeccable pedigree.

So it is that we move forward to the first ever FA Cup Final to be held at the beginning of June. For some of us this feels sacrilege since we can already see the first begonias and nasturtiums, hydrangeas, red and white roses, verbenas and violets and a splash of colour in our gardens and parks. Today is the first Bank Holiday of the year and it's hard to believe that the final whistle has just been blown on the last day of the English football season.

This Saturday marks another first in the most prestigious Cup competition in the world. After a series of all London FA Cup Finals, Merseyside Finals and a liberal sprinkling of North West and East England Finals, this year sees the first meeting of the two Manchester giants in an FA Cup Final. Manchester United will be playing their noisy neighbours Manchester City at Wembley this Saturday afternoon.

It does have the feel of an Industrial Revolution about it since Manchester is still mightily proud of its Ship Canal, the commercial products that continue to roll off its production line and a Victorian heritage which is still evident throughout the city. Undoubtedly Manchester is still thriving and vibrant. It now houses the National Football Museum and the Trafford Centre remains its most attractive feature on its high streets. The National Football Museum is still immensely popular and when the city wakes up on Saturday morning thoughts will naturally turn to its legends, Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson, the unforgettable genius of George Best, Denis Law, Sir Bobby Charlton on the red side while Pep Guardiola, Malcolm Allison, Joe Mercer, Francis Lee, Rodney Marsh and Colin Bell will evoke all the lovely memories from the light blue side of the city.

The week leading up to any FA Cup Final is always tinged with joy, sadness, passion, belief, a sense that this is your turn to win the Cup again rather than your neighbour's team. You've invested all those emotional sensibilities into one weekend of the football year and this is it. It's our turn to win it for a change and yet for both City and United this must feel deja vu on the most spellbinding scale. They know exactly where Wembley way and need no directions whatsoever.

Of course the only difference this time is that City and United will now come face to face underneath the Wembley Arch and a strange sense of novelty will pervade North London. The whole of Manchester will descend on the West End of London in their vocal multitudes, swapping banter and bonhomie all the way into the stadium, jokes, wisecracks, salty vulgarities, witty one liners and the inevitable gallows humour. City don't like United and vice versa. The feelings are mutual, a fiercely competitive, crunch Manchester derby, hatred, animosity and loathing with every bite of their hot dogs and burgers.

Some of us will still be lamenting the loss of the traditional TV coverage of the FA Cup Final. 50 years ago we were treated to both of the main terrestrial stations from just after breakfast until late into the gloaming of evening when bottles of celebratory milk were drunk by the winning team. Grandstand on BBC One and World of Sport. It was always a warm homage to football, an explosion of colour on the Wembley terraces, the two Cup Final teams travelling to the national stadium on their coaches and then being interviewed while playing cards or putting a harmless flutter on the horses, a gamble to remember.

This year of course is the 50th anniversary of the FA Cup Final between Don Revie's all conquering Leeds United and old Second Division Sunderland. Unfairly it could be said that Leeds resembled chameleons in as much as that you never knew what you were going to get with them. They seemed to change colour with every single match and were at times almost a contradiction in terms. One minute they were hard tackling, cynical and, quite possibly, self destructive while the next they were joyful and beautiful on the eye.

Then there was Sunderland unfancied, unglamorous, no frills and just outsiders, supposedly Leeds social inferiors. Who were they to swan all the way down to Wembley in the FA Cup Final. But when the referee blew the final whistle on the 1973 FA Cup Final even Basil Brush, a regular BBC TV Saturday fixture of the time, would have been highly amused at the final score. Sunderland had beaten high flying Leeds. The sight of Sunderland boss Bob Stokoe racing onto the pitch to hug Sunderland goalkeeper Jim Montgomery lives long and warmly in the memory bank. The FA Cup had been won by Sunderland, a team outside the top division but never daunted or flustered. Leeds looked like dejected third year schoolchildren who had just been told to write a thousand lines by way of a suitable punishment.

And so we find ourselves days away from one of English football's most highly coveted prize, a gleaming Cup with what have always been one of the most distinctive of shapes. For the old school traditionalists the FA Cup will never be the same as it used to be but that might have something to do with the march of progress. Whatever happened to the lap of honour given by the winning side in a Cup Final, what happened to the captain being carried on the players shoulder after the game? Why does the game kick off at closer to 5.30pm rather than the customary 3pm and whatever happened to the stunning formalities, the rendition of Abide With Me on a proper platform and not forgetting the brass bands?

Still here we are in 2023 and if you do happen to be living outside the UK, you may think it highly unlikely that the Seychelles will have live coverage of the FA Cup Final. But the game is now very much a global commodity so all you'll have to do is switch on your I Pad, Tablet or Laptop and there it'll be at your disposal immediately. No aerials will have to be shifted about to the kitchen or garden and rather than press the buttons on your telly one remote control will cut out all the aggravation and hassle.

So here's the plan for this Saturday afternoon. You draw the curtains or blinds in your living room, invite the neighbourhood into your home and then just savour the occasion with family and friends. It's a Manchester derby and anything can and probably will happen. Something tells me that this could be the year Manchester City could triumph again but then we all know what happened in 2013 when Wigan Athletic beat City in the 2013 FA Cup Final and Ben Watson scored the winner for Wigan in the final minutes. Manchester United are simply Manchester United, serial winners of the old First Division and Premier League, Champions League and European Cup winners and a household name across the world. Our mouths are watering and we can hardly wait. Bring on the gladiators.