Manchester City will try to make history at Wembley by becoming the first team to reach four consecutive FA Cup finals when they face Chelsea in Saturday’s Fa Cup Final. Chelsea, meanwhile, arrive at their 17th final, a figure bettered only by Manchester United and Arsenal, but they have lost their last three at the national stadium.
The stakes are unusually high for City because they already have the EFL Cup this season and could finish with both major English domestic cup competitions. If they do, it would be only the sixth domestic cup double in English football. Chelsea know the scale of the task: they have not beaten City in 13 meetings across all competitions since the 2020-21 UEFA Champions League final, a run that stands at 10 City wins and three draws.
That recent dominance goes beyond one matchup. Since the 2016-17 season, City have won 45 FA Cup matches, scored 159 goals and kept 28 clean sheets, while Chelsea have won 37, scored 111 and kept 26. City have also won 21 of their last 23 FA Cup matches, and their only defeats in that spell came in the 2024 and 2025 finals, first to Manchester United and then to Crystal Palace.
For Chelsea, the route here has been efficient but uneven. Four of their five FA Cup wins this season came against sides from outside the Premier League, and their other victory was against Leeds in the semi-final. They have not beaten two top-flight sides in one FA Cup season since 2020-21, when they beat Sheffield United in the quarter-final and City in the semi-final on the way to the trophy.
Enzo Fernández gave Chelsea the winner against Leeds and now has six goal involvements in nine FA Cup appearances for the club, with four goals and two assists. That matters because the last time a Chelsea player scored in both the semi-final and final in the same season was 2011-12, when Didier Drogba and Ramires both did it. Levi Colwill, who helped frame Chelsea’s recent draw at Liverpool into their final push, will be part of a team trying to end a bruising Wembley trend.
City’s edge is not just in results but in volume. They have averaged 21 shots per game in FA Cup finals in this run, compared with 19 from the third round to the semi-finals, but their final-day finishing has been blunt, with a shot conversion rate of 2 per cent in finals against 19 per cent earlier in the competition. Chelsea have not been much livelier at Wembley either: their last eight matches there have produced only seven goals in total, and they have failed to score in each of their last four finals at the stadium.
Jérémy Doku may tilt the contest if he gets space. In the last two FA Cup seasons, no player has been involved in more goals than the City winger, whose five assists and 40 dribbles lead all Premier League players in that span. City will still back themselves because the evidence across the competition says they have been the more reliable team, while Chelsea’s recent Wembley record says they have not yet rediscovered the sharpness that once carried them to finals like the 2020 victory over Arsenal, when Christian Pulisic scored in the fifth minute.
This final brings together two of the strongest FA Cup sides of the modern era, but the balance of form is hard to ignore. City are trying to turn another cup run into a domestic double. Chelsea are trying to stop a long losing streak against one opponent and a longer scoring drought on one ground. Wembley will decide whether City’s grip on the competition tightens again or Chelsea finally force the game to break their way.
