LONDON // By the end, the game was being played at walking pace. So complete was Arsenal’s domination that the final half-hour felt like little more than the prelude to the presentation.
Arsenal’s win could hardly have been more emphatic.
In the semi-final, Villa had snapped and surged through midfield, never giving Liverpool time to settle; here, they barely made an impression.
Arsenal took control early on and never surrendered it. Villa could not get hold of the ball and with a high defensive line they always looked vulnerable.
It took a superb save form Shay Given, an excellent block from Kieran Richardson and two misses from Aaron Ramsey to keep Arsenal out even as long as the 40th minute.
By then, the only doubt was whether, having missed so many chances they would, as they have so often done in recent times, become so frustrated at their inability to score that they neglected defending.
Eventually, Theo Walcott – preferred to Olivier Giroud at centre-forward after his hat-trick against West Bromwich Albion last week – made the breakthrough just as Arsenal were perhaps beginning to show signs of twitchiness.
He had moved, temporarily, out to the left and drifted infield to lash home the bouncing ball as Alexis Sanchez headed across goal.
Sanchez scored a sensational second, lashing in a swerving 25-yard shot five minutes after half time. A Per Mertesacker header on 61 minutes and an injury-time goal from Giroud completed the greatest margin of victory in a final for 20 years. It could have been more.
Villa were dreadful. In part Arsenal did not let them play, their midfield pressing high and then passing the ball intelligently, but Villa were also culpable.
Tactically they could not impose themselves but there was perhaps also a feeling that the occasion got to them.
Christian Benteke, so effective until now under Tom Sherwood, was awful, Jack Grealish and Charles N’Zogbia peripheral, and Ashley Westwood was reduced to desperate ineffectual flails as Arsenal swarmed by them.
So lacking in drama was the game that thoughts inevitably began to drift to next season.
After last year’s fraught 3-2 win over Hull City and the release of emotion when the drought ended, this was almost quotidian, a highly accomplished ticking of a box, but a ticking of a box nonetheless.
As Ramsey noted immediately after the game, the key now is to transform the momentum of these cup wins and the form Arsenal have shown since the turn of the year into a serious challenge for the league.
This had been too one-sided a final to be long remembered for the game, but it may come to stand as a key point in the evolution of Arsene Wenger’s new Arsenal.
REPORT CARD
Arsenal 8/10 – Utterly in control from start to finish, pressing well and creating chances.
Aston Villa 3/10 – Insipid in the extreme, this was a mystifyingly limp performance. They just never got going.
Man of the match: Francis Coquelin
The Frenchman, 24, was at the root of Arsenal’s domination of midfield: defensively sound and distributed intelligently.
sports@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter at our new home at NatSportUAE