Chelsea will start as overwhelming favourites tonight as they try to become the first club to retain the FA Cup since 2003 and the first to do the double since 2002.
Tonight's final is top versus bottom from the Premier League and the market suggests there is little chance of an upset, with Chelsea 1.13 favourites. Portsmouth are 15.00 to pull off the biggest shock since Wimbledon defeated Liverpool in the 1988 final and the fact that there has been no comparable result in more than two decades shows how difficult it has become for the lesser clubs to win one of English soccer's big prizes.
One of England's big-four clubs have lifted the FA Cup in all but three of the years since Wimbledon's triumph and the stats show that when a big-four club have faced an opponent from outside the elite in the final, victory has gone to the big-four representative 12 times out of 13 since the Wimbledon-Liverpool final, though only seven have been won in 90 minutes.
One of those occasions was last year when Chelsea recovered from the shock of conceding a first-minute goal to beat Everton 2-1. On paper that was a much more difficult game for Chelsea than tonight's match, as Everton had just finished fifth in the Premier League and knocked out Manchester United in the semi-final.
Portsmouth are not in the same league as Everton - literally, as of next season - and Chelsea's 5-0 league win at Portsmouth seven weeks ago suggests tonight's final is a mismatch. Chelsea also won the reverse fixture at Stamford Bridge, though that was a much closer 2-1 win, settled by Frank Lampard's 79th-minute penalty.
A tight, low-scoring game would fit the pattern of FA Cup finals in the Premier League era, with 12 of the 17 finals in that period having under 2.5 goals, but Chelsea's free-scoring game means the potential is there for another runaway win. That has been more the norm in similarly matched finals, with big-four teams beating opponents from outside the top 10 of the Premier League 3-0, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0 and 4-0 in the Premier League era.