Just after Manchester City went 2-0 up and this game effectively died, Watford had one of those half chances that at least gave their supporters a degree of hope.
Defensive lines weren’t cleared, the ball fell to Troy Deeney and the Watford captain snatched at a shot which Ederson smothered.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. Or so you might have thought. It mattered to Pep Guardiola. On the Wembley touchline he fairly exploded.
English game has been moulded in Pep Guardiola's image following his FA Cup triumph
Arms were thrown in the air, he spun round and faced his assistants sat on the bench, aghast. A flurry of Catalan or Spanish invective was emitted in a suburban corner of north-west London.
Mikel Arteta rose from the bench, seemingly to placate his boss. But arms were now being flung seemingly in varied and bizarre directions, a sign of clear distress. Guardiola felt that his side had erred.
It was only a moment but it was pure Guardiola. He can be charming, funny and infuriatingly inconsistent, for examples when it comes to issue of human rights. But he is nothing if not intense.
That would be the word most would use about him. There is a rich seam of literature detailing Guardiola’s methodology and there was, of course, Amazon’s hagiography of a TV documentary last year, which seemed almost to be in awe of the man.
Yet amidst the obsessiveness and the excruciating attention to detail, it was the sheer volatility of the man that stood out.
Guardiola cut an animated figure following a rare City mistake during the first half at Wembley
There is a plausible argument that his energy and intelligence changed modern football when he took over at Barcelona in 2008.
He wasn’t the first to utilise pressing nor did he invent passing football. But he undoubtedly combined the two to reboot the vision of his mentor Johan Cruyff. This was Total Football 2.0.
Yet if we just a tactical wonk, he wouldn’t be half the man he is. The charisma he carries and sheer force of his personality is what is evident in those frequent dressing room meltdowns.
We used to call that the hairdryer. Guardiola probably calls it a heated tactical debate.
It is almost as though bad football or unnecessary mistakes physically disgust him. That’s how it seemed in the 44th minute. He was, of course furious with his defence, irate that they had switched off for a second.
We didn’t need the past fortnight to remind us that, even with a team as might as this Manchester City are, a 2-0 lead doesn’t necessarily mean an awful lot.
Still, the game was absolutely as routine as we had expected. A team that has amassed 198 points over the last two season swatted aside a team that had managed to accumulate – very creditably – 91 in the same period.
The game was absolutely as routine as we had expected as City romped home to a 6-0 victory
It wasn’t the first one-sided FA Cup final, even if it
