Can Pep Guardiola’s side make it a domestic cup double? We look ahead to Saturday’s FA Cup final with our Chelsea vs Man City prediction and preview.
Chelsea vs Man City: The Key Stats
Manchester City won after 90 minutes in a convincing 57.6% of pre-match simulations by the Opta supercomputer.
Chelsea’s 13-game winless run against Man City is their longest against an opponent since going 17 without a victory against Arsenal between January 1999 and March 2004.
Man City are the first team ever to play in four consecutive FA Cup finals, but they have lost the last two.
Manchester City will turn their attention away from the Premier League title race when they aim for a second major domestic cup double in Saturday’s FA Cup final against Chelsea.
Having already overcome Arsenal in the EFL Cup final, City could make it the sixth instance of a team winning both major English cup competitions, after Arsenal in 1992-93, Liverpool in 2000-01 and 2021-22, Chelsea in 2006-07 and the Citizens themselves in 2018-19.
Pep Guardiola’s side will be the first team to play in four consecutive FA Cup finals, but they have lost the last two – against Manchester United and Crystal Palace – after beating the Red Devils in 2023. Coincidentally, Chelsea are the only side to have ever lost the final in this competition in three consecutive campaigns, doing so between 2020 and 2022.
The Blues are no strangers to this stage either – this will be Chelsea’s 17th FA Cup final, the third most after Man Utd (22) and Arsenal (21). They have won eight and lost eight of their such appearances.
But Chelsea have not enjoyed playing finals at Wembley recently. They have failed to score in each of their last four finals at the national stadium since a fifth-minute Christian Pulisic goal against Arsenal in the 2020 FA Cup showpiece, which they still lost 2-1.
The pair do seem to have an appetite for this competition. Since the 2016-17 season, the two teams to win the most games in the FA Cup are Man City (45) and Chelsea (37).
They have also scored the most goals (City 159, Chelsea 111) and kept the most clean sheets (City 28, Chelsea 26) in that time, though Calum McFarlane may feel his side are slightly undercooked against higher-quality opposition in this season’s edition.
Four of Chelsea’s five wins in this campaign have been against sides from below the Premier League, with the other coming against Leeds United in the semi-final. They have not beaten two top-flight sides in the competition in a single season since 2020-21, one of which was Man City in the semi-final after overcoming Sheffield United in the last eight.
City, by contrast, will fancy their chances. They have won 21 of their last 23 matches in the FA Cup, with their only defeats in that period coming in the last two finals.
Central to any Blues hope may be Enzo Fernández, who has been involved in six goals in nine FA Cup appearances for Chelsea (4 goals, 2 assists) after scoring the winner in the semi-final against Leeds. Chelsea have not had a player score in both the last four and the final since 2011-12, when Didier Drogba and Ramires both did so.
Enzo Fernandez FA Cup goal involvements
Alejandro Garnacho will also have good FA Cup memories against Guardiola’s side, having scored against them in the 2024 final for Man Utd. No player has scored in an FA Cup final against an opponent for two different teams.
City have their own attacking quality, too. No player has been involved in more FA Cup goals than Man City’s Jérémy Doku (3 goals, 5 assists) across the last two seasons, while the Belgian’s five assists and 40 dribbles are the most of any Premier League player in that time.
Doku may have to pick up more of the attacking burden as well, given Erling Haaland has played in nine finals and attempted 15 shots without scoring for City, including the Community Shield.
The Norwegian’s last goal in a final was for Borussia Dortmund against RB Leipzig in May 2021 in the German DFB-Pokal, when he scored twice. Wembley is also the only stadium Haaland has played at more than twice for City without scoring (8 games, 601 minutes, 11 shots).
Chelsea vs Man City Head-to-Head
Since losing the 2020-21 UEFA Champions League final to Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea, City have not lost any of their last 13 games against the Blues in all competitions (W10 D3).
That marks City’s longest unbeaten run against Chelsea, while it is the Blues’ longest winless run against an opponent since going 17 without a victory against Arsenal between January 1999 and March 2004.
Guardiola’s side beat Chelsea 3-0 at Stamford Bridge in their most recent Premier League meeting last month, though McFarlane – in his first interim stint – did snatch a 1-1 draw at the Etihad Stadium on 4 January.
Chelsea 0-3 Man City Premier League 25-26
And this neutral venue has become commonplace for these two teams to meet. This will be the seventh meeting between the pair at Wembley – only Chelsea vs Manchester United has been played there more often (9 times).
Chelsea vs Man City Prediction
The Opta supercomputer struggled to see past a Manchester City win as Guardiola’s side triumphed in 90 minutes across 57.6% of 10,000 pre-match simulations.
Chelsea were afforded just a 20.6% chance of victory in normal time, while the draw – which would mean extra-time and possibly penalties – was rated at 21.8%.
FA Cup final Opta prediction 2025-26
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 15,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Saturday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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