Arsenal v Chelsea: FA Cup final 2020 – live!

90 min +2: Some good work by Alonso wins a corner out on the left … but Martinez claims the resulting set piece with great confidence.

90 min: There will be seven added minutes. Can Chelsea find an equaliser? Or could Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang become the first player to score a hat-trick in the FA Cup final since Stan Mortensen in 1953?

89 min: Barkley is booked for overstretching and sticking his studs on Nketiah’s instep.

88 min: Luiz limps off, to be replaced by Sokratis. It’s a substitution Arsenal take their sweet time to make.

86 min: Luiz is down, holding his shin. On comes the physio. He might not be completing this match.

85 min: Chelsea are struggling to get out of their final third. Pepe swings one in from the right, but the flag goes up for offside, offering some brief respite for the Blues.

83 min: Tierney crosses low from the left. Rudiger shanks out for a corner. Arsenal work it out to Maitland-Niles, who curls towards the far post. Jorginho should let it float out for a goal kick, but eyebrows it out for another corner instead. He’s very relieved as Arsenal make nothing of it.

80 min: Jorginho clips a long pass down the inside-left channel. Abraham chases. Martinez comes out of his box, considers heading clear, then turns and claims with his hands. Abraham is convinced the keeper has handled outside his area … but the referee decides the ball was on the line. VAR checks and agrees. That was very close, though, and Arsenal hearts were in mouths for a second there.

78 min: Chelsea have no option but to roll the dice. Giroud, Mount and Rudiger are replaced by Abraham, Hudson-Odoi and Barkley.

77 min: James swings in from the right. Martinez does well to tip away from the danger zone, under pressure from Giroud.

75 min: Now Rudiger is booked as a throw-in somehow escalates. Mikel Arteta sees yellow too for getting involved in some sort of scramble. Chelsea need to calm down quicksmart, because as harsh as that sending off was, this is where they are now, and time is running out.

73 min: Kovacic slides in on Xhaka, who goes over. The ref books Ceballos for asking the ref to flash a second yellow … then does what the Arsenal midfielder wanted anyway. A second yellow, and Kovacic is off. There really wasn’t much in that. Very light contact, and Chelsea are livid.

71 min: The game restarts. On the touchline, Lampard wears a furrowed brow. That goal came against the run of play.

What a finish this is! Bellerin bombs down the middle, a run of great determination. He collides with Christensen, and it could be a free kick for Arsenal, but the ref waves play on. Pepe slips the loose ball left for Aubameyang, who takes a touch, drops a shoulder to slip past Zouma on the outside, and dinks over Caballero. That’s such a cool finish from a not particularly inviting angle.

66 min: Mount is seeing a lot of the ball down the left. He’s nearly sent clear by Giroud’s scooped pass, but settles for earning a corner. Mount swings it in himself. Zouma bangs into Tierney, and it’s a free kick, a chance for Arsenal to regroup.

64 min: Chelsea are slowly pushing Arsenal further back, and now much of the play is on the edge of the Gunners’ box. Mount very nearly dribbles his way through with a baroque run; then he nearly finds Giroud in the middle with a cute low cross from the left. Not quite, but Frank Lampard will be the happier manager right now.

62 min: Pedro tries to inject some vim with a determined dribble down the middle. He considers shooting, but turns down the half-chance and tees up James, tearing in from the right, instead. James wangs a wild effort high and wide.

61 min: It’s a much slower game now. Chelsea continue to pass, Arsenal continue to hold their shape.

59 min: Some more of the old Chelsea possession. None of it really worries Arsenal. This second half needs a spark.

57 min: Jorginho, quarterbacking from deep, pings a lovely long pass down the middle and very nearly finds Mount. Not quite. Arsenal go straight up the other end through Lacazette down the right. He rolls across the face of the box for Aubameyang, who tries to round Christensen with his first touch but takes an uncharacteristically heavy one. Xhaka tries to retrieve the situation with a long-distance blooter, but it’s hideously wayward.

54 min: This second half hasn’t quite got going yet. “Thanks for the reminder of Coventry-Spurs,” begins Neil Hickman. “A colleague of mine at the time (who was a lifelong Sky Blue and always claimed that the only good thing to come out of Birmingham – my home town – was the Coventry Road) was at Wembley and for one brief, glorious moment, was able to abandon his favoured line: I have supported Coventry City through thin and thin.”

52 min: James floats a diagonal ball towards Giroud on the left. Holding does extremely well to guide a disruptive header back to Martinez, because Chelsea were two on one there, Pedro also in attendance.

50 min: Mount’s corner is easily claimed by Martinez. Incidentally, at half time, Arsenal asked the ref why Azpilicueta didn’t see red over the penalty incident. By all accounts he would have, but only had it not been a penalty, double jeopardy and all that.

49 min: Pedro is immediately into the thick of the action, zipping down the left and nearly getting the better of Holding. Just as he crosses, the defender blocks out for a corner.

47 min: Pulisic hammers the ground in despair, he knows his race is run. He’s helped off, to be replaced by Pedro. What awful luck for the young American, though he’ll always have an FA Cup final goal on his resume.

Arsenal get the second half underway. Chelsea’s captain Azpilicueta hobbles to the bench with plenty of ice and padding wrapped around his thigh. And almost immediately there’s more bad injury news, as Pulisic ghosts past Holding to tear down the left. He curls a low diagonal shot wide right … and immediately goes down in agony, his hamstring gone.

More half-time entertainment. A callback to the preamble of this MBM, courtesy of SIG Mills.

All square at half-time, then. Chelsea started fast; Arsenal finished the stronger. Good luck calling the winner of this. Here’s to an equally entertaining second half.

45 min +5: Mount is booked for doing little more than clipping Ceballos. It was a free kick but nothing more. The referee responding there to the comic-book YAROOOO emitted by Ceballos as he fell.

45 min +4: An appropriately quiet end to an otherwise heavy-metal half. It’s been great entertainment. They do like putting on a show in the cup final, these two.

45 min +2: “Didn’t Brian Kilcline come off in 1987, or is my aged memory playing tricks?” wonders Neil Way. “Azpilicueta could be like him, though there the comparison probably ends.” Heh. And yes, indeed he did, knackering himself by bodychecking Gary Mabbutt. Those desirous of reliving that particular classic can do so by clicking below.

45 min: Lacazette lashes the free kick towards the top right, but gets the swerve all wrong and it flies harmlessly wide. There will be five added minutes.

44 min: Pepe dribbles with grace down the inside-left channel, and is brought down by Christensen just outside the box. A free kick in a very dangerous position, on the left-hand edge of the D.

43 min: One corner leads to another, and for a split second Pepe has the chance to shoot from the edge of the box. But he can’t sort his feet out properly. Arsenal are very much in the ascendancy right now.

42 min: More Arsenal probing. Pepe loops a cross from the right, forcing Caballero to tip out for a corner. The set piece leads to a load of nonsense in the Chelsea box, Alonso shanking a clearance. Pepe tries to get a shot away, but Christensen manages to block, albeit at the cost of a corner.

40 min: A series of Chelsea mistakes – a misplaced Christensen backpass, a poor Caballero clearance, a clank off Rudiger’s shin – allow Arsenal to probe around the box. This is good possession.

38 min: Tierney romps down the left and loops long for Pepe, who nearly works a defence-splitting one-two with Bellerin. But Chelsea swarm back just in the nick of time. Arsenal are looking the more dangerous now. Tierney is a proper player.

36 min: Perhaps that’s on Jorginho’s mind as he leans back and skies an awful shot from the edge of the Arsenal box, wasting some good work by Mount down the inside-left channel.

35 min: Having said that, I have no idea what the protocol is when the winning captain doesn’t end the game on the pitch. Jorginho now has the captain’s armband, and he might have something to say on the matter should Chelsea prevail.

34 min: Poor old Azpilicueta is in tears, his cup final over as he limps off. It’s not been a good day at the office so far for the Chelsea captain, but you never know, he could easily still end it by lifting the cup. Christensen comes on in his stead.

32 min: Arsenal have recovered so well from all that early Chelsea pressure. And here’s some more bad news for the Blues, as Azpilicueta goes down grimacing and holding his hamstring. He looks in real distress, fingers covering his eyes.

30 min: Luiz sticks his elbow in Giroud’s back as the pair contest a high ball. Giroud goes down with a yell, and there’s a quick VAR check for foul play. But it’s nothing more than a garden-variety foul, and much to Frank Lampard’s displeasure on the touchline, we play on.

VAR sticks its neb in, unnecessarily so, taking an age to boot. But the decision stands, and Aubameyang confidently sidefoots into the bottom right. So cool!

26 min: Tierney rakes a long pass down the left. Aubameyang gets ahead of Azpilicueta and makes for the box. Just as he steps inside, the Chelsea captain brings him down. The ref points to the spot!

25 min: Pepe curls a glorious shot into the top-left corner of the Chelsea net … but the flag had gone up for offside earlier in the move. Correctly so: Holding’s ball down the left flank caught Maitland-Niles too far ahead of play. What a finish, though. Chelsea hadn’t stopped playing.

23 min: The game restarts with a long throw down the Arsenal left. Lacazette chests down but can’t keep the ball under control just as space started to open up in front of him.

21 min: Luiz sprays a long pass down the left and nearly releases Aubameyang, but the ball takes a swerve to the left and James is able to recover and usher it out of play. Arsenal are getting plenty of encouragement down their left flank.