Manchester City take another step on the road toward a tantalisingly close treble

For a few weeks I have felt this would be the toughest leg on Manchester City’s treble. Arsenal could not keep up in the Premier League. Will Inter be able to hold on next week in the Champions League? The most difficult opponents could be Manchester United today in the FA Cup.

How difficult?

Premier League results this season – games won, drawn and lost, goals scored and conceded – suggest that at a neutral venue City would have a 67 per cent chance of scoring each goal that is scored in a game against United.

There is another way of reaching the same conclusion.

City have won the Premier League in five of the past six seasons. In games against other members of the Big Six – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham and United – City scored 67 per cent of all goals.

What does that imply for City’s chance of winning the FA Cup in a final that could go to extra time or penalties? It implies a 76 per cent chance.

When other members of the Big Six beat City they did so on the counter-attack. To some extent this is stating the obvious. How else could they play? Most of the time City will have the ball, even against the best opponents. The result depends on whether their opponents can score more goals from what are likely to be fewer chances. Sometimes they do, but more often they do not.

Today, I think, there is a 24 per cent chance United will score most goals – or the same number then prevail in a penalty shootout – against City.

In the early 1990s I wrote to the editor of a monthly betting magazine with an idea for an article to coincide with the third round of the FA Cup. I suggested words, written by me, saying that the FA Cup promised one thing but delivered another. It had a reputation for being a competition of surprises. The reality was that in recent times it had been won nearly always by a small number of clubs.

The editor politely declined my offer. It was one of the nicest of the great many rejections I received when I was a freelancer. The magazine is no longer published; I liked it. But what I did not write there I have written since in other places – most often in the Racing Post. It is still true, though the composition of the elite winners has changed slightly.

This will be the 25th time in 28 seasons that the FA Cup has been won by one of the Big Six.  Over the previous 27 seasons there were eight wins for Arsenal, seven for Chelsea, four for United, three for Liverpool, two for City – but none for Tottenham.

This will be the 22nd time in 28 seasons that the FA Cup has been won by a team who entered in the third round as one of the top five in the Premier League. City were second, United fourth. Both finished one place higher.

Identifying the most likely winners of the FA Cup is easy. Correctly choosing which of them will win is not. I have said what I think are the chances for today.

The latest in a long line of FA Cup final derbies

Others may have misled you. This is not the first Manchester derby in an FA Cup final. It is the fifth. It is the first between City and United, but not the first between two clubs from what is now called Greater Manchester.

The most recent was ten years ago when City lost to Wigan. The earliest was in 1904 when City beat Bolton. In 1926 City lost to Bolton, and in 1958 Bolton beat United.

This will be the 20th final that could be described as some sort of derby. The others were seven London derbies, six midlands derbies and two Merseyside derbies.

Goodbye

This is the last piece I will write for the Racing Post. If you were kind enough to read any or even many of the others, thank you. After all these years I can find words for most things, but not for how much I will miss writing for you.

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