Defending FA Cup Crown Would Show Arsenal Are Slowly Acquiring Winning Habit

Another season, another trip to Wembley for Arsenal. Depending on how they deal with Aston Villa’s Christian Benteke-shaped threat on Saturday, they have a great chance to end another season with some silverware.

This is the crux of the matter for Arsenal in the FA Cup final. While winning the competition would be great in and of itself, successfully defending the cup would perhaps be the more significant step. It would suggest the steady acquisition of a winning habit for Arsene Wenger’s side, a winning steel, something they will need as they bid to realise the squad’s broad potential and challenge more seriously for the trophies the club really wants.

“For us it’s an opportunity to finish our season on a high and to reward the whole team with a trophy,” Arsene Wenger said in his pre-final press conference, relayed by the club's official website. “That’s what you want to achieve.

“Maybe last year the expectation level was more demanding—the demand [to win] was absolute last year. But we have our own demands inside the group here and we have high expectation for our game on Saturday and we want to do it.”

Without wishing to denigrate the FA Cup, a competition that has made something of a comeback in recent seasons, it is now firmly entrenched in the second tier of major trophies. The Premier League and Champions League stand out above all for the biggest English sides, so it is perhaps a pertinent reminder of how far Arsenal still have to grow that they were a fair way off the pace in both those competitions this season.

Nevertheless, this year has shown real, tangible progress, with only a disappointing late-season slump preventing Arsene Wenger’s side from finishing second in the division. A third-place finish might not seem like much of an improvement on the club’s usual fourth-place showing, but it should not be forgotten that it was they who were the last challengers to Chelsea left standing during the run-in.

Rather than scrambling to nick that last Champions League qualification spot, Arsenal were the team keeping the title race alive as long as possible.

Last year’s FA Cup final ended the club’s well-publicised nine-year trophy drought, giving many members of the current squad their first taste of what it is like to win silverware. Repeating that feat a year later would surely speak to the new profile of Wenger’s squad, one increasingly comfortable and capable of keeping its cool at the business end of proceedings.

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Football is littered with teams who have proved themselves to be adept in cup competitions while lacking the consistency required to win the league. That is a leap Arsenal still have to make, but the general profile of the current squad suggests they will at least have the opportunity to make that jump over the next few seasons.

“It has been a positive season but I have still got ambitions to win more,” forward Alexis Sanchez told BT Sport. "I would like to be closer to winning the Premier League title and get further in the Champions League.

“Every time I play, I do it with the same motivation. I want the team to grow more and to compete in every competition we play.”

Sanchez’s arrival has undoubtedly elevated Arsenal’s play this season, not just in the goals and assists he has provided—16 and eight respectively in the league this season—but also in the work ethic he brings to the team on the pitch and the influence and status, as one of the finest attackers in the game, he has off it.

With Sanchez following on from Mesut Ozil’s arrival a year earlier, Arsene Wenger has added to a core of talented young footballers with some true blue-chip talents. Add another such player this summer—preferably in defence, although a striker might be a fine alternative—and find a way to improve the injury record of the rest of the squad, and Arsenal will make another step forward next season, just as Chelsea did this term thanks to the purchases of Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa.

If Aaron Ramsey, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Hector Bellerin and others continue to progress as you would hope they would, then Arsenal's squad will only grow more formidable with experience. All that is missing is the mental fortitude required to retain the highest of standards, something that will be created by winning trophies and working alongside players who know what is required, such as Sanchez and Ozil.

“The reason why I moved to Arsenal is because there were a group of young players with the ambition to achieve things,” Sanchez added. “I thought that Arsenal was the perfect club for me, the perfect club to win titles and compete in every competition.”

This season, the two main competitions proved beyond the Gunners, but retaining the FA Cup may at least foster the sort of spirit and desire required to sustain challenges for the bigger prizes.

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Arsenal are the favourites in the FA Cup final, but Aston Villa will pose a very real threat on Saturday, predominantly in the form of Benteke.

“He’s a player who has a massive potential,” Wenger noted, via his club's official website. “I think some of the bad fortune of Aston Villa this season was linked with the fact that Benteke was not there.

“When he came back into the team, he gave a lift to everybody and of course he has a fantastic leap, he’s an intelligent player as well and he can score goals with his feet. He’s fantastic in the air and can score headers against any team in the league."

More generally, he added: “If you analyse their individual quality, they are a strong team. They had a great semi-final and of course they have a quality, Premier League team who have a lot of strengths in our side. They are a strong opponent.”

In Benteke, Villa have a more potent threat than Hull City possessed 12 months ago, yet Steve Bruce’s side found themselves 2-0 up before a breathtaking comeback eventually secured Arsenal’s victory.

A similarly fraught afternoon would not appeal to the Arsenal fans, although it would appeal to the neutrals. If Arsenal avoid that fate and beat Tim Sherwood’s side with a clinical efficiency that was lacking last season, that would perhaps be a tangible sign of the progress the Gunners are making.

With a summer in which to make another big-name signing or two, the Arsenal that returns for pre-season training in July might be the best equipped in years to push for bigger things.