citys

Manchester City face Chelsea in the FA Cup final looking to add to their League Cup success and with eye on EPL title.

Pep Guardiola insists Manchester City have had a successful season, whether or not they win the Premier League title or the FA Cup final against Chelsea on Saturday.

Guardiola’s side will put their attempt to catch Premier League leaders Arsenal on hold as they head to Wembley for a fourth successive FA Cup final appearance.

City start every season with the Premier League and Champions League as their main targets, but they are on the verge of falling short in both.

Knocked out of the Champions League last 16 by Real Madrid in March, City will be five points behind Arsenal if the Gunners beat relegated Burnley at home on Monday.

Guardiola’s men can close the gap back to two points with victory at Bournemouth in their penultimate match of the season on Tuesday.

But Arsenal would then still be able to guarantee their first English title since 2004 by winning at Crystal Palace on May 24.

Having already won the League Cup by beating Arsenal, City have a chance for a domestic double this weekend.

However, Guardiola is adamant the campaign has been positive, no matter what happens at Wembley or in the title race.

“It depends on the trophies you lift. Sometimes you lift trophies and the season has been successful,” said Guardiola, who would only offer “we’ll see” when asked if Rodri would be fit to start in midfield.

“Sometimes, you lift and the truth is the season has been really, really bad.

“I said a few weeks ago this season has been good. Really, really good.”

After starting with Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku on the bench for Wednesday’s win against Crystal Palace, Guardiola is likely to field a full-strength team against Chelsea instead of prioritising the title fight.

“It is the final of the FA Cup. The message is there are two prestigious clubs at Wembley in the FA Cup final. Our fans make an incredible effort to come down to London. It is not cheap,” he said.

“We try to perform as much as possible to win. It is always the game plan.”

City have lost the last two FA Cup finals against Crystal Palace and Manchester United, who they had beaten in the 2023 showpiece.

“There’s excitement, of course. I hope we can do better than the last two times,” Guardiola said.

“Wembley is still a special place. Everything is so nice. The pitch is extraordinary. We are desperate to perform well.”

Ahead of his 24th trip to Wembley with City, Guardiola joked that he is “so disappointed” he has not had a stand named after him at the home of English football.

“So many times I have been there, at least a lounge or a box or something like that. Maybe I have to go 24 more times,” he said.

Guardiola has one year left on his City contract and is yet to sign a new deal amid speculation that he could end his decade at the Etihad Stadium once the current campaign is over.

Asked about reports that City’s fitness coach Lorenzo Buenaventura and goalkeeping coach Xabi Mancisidor are set to leave the club, Guardiola said with a smirk: “I extended the contract with them three more years,” before adding: “Nope”.

The Wende Museum of the Cold War announced on Saturday that it plans to build a $16-million expansion in Hawthorne.

The Culver City museum has purchased a historically significant midcentury modern building in Hawthorne, which it plans to transform into a research institute and interactive storage facility for its collections — a “living archive,” as it’s calling the facility.

The Wende plans to debut the space in spring 2028.

“In the museum world, there’s typically public space and storage space — meaning dead storage,” Wende founder and Executive Director Justin Jampol said in an interview. “And this living archive is a hybrid that combines both. It houses the collections and makes them accessible for discovery.”

The 24,000-square-foot building was erected in 1965 by shopping mall pioneer and developer Ernest Hahn to serve as his corporate headquarters. It was designed by movie theater architect George Nowak, who also designed the Writers Guild Theater.

The Wende plans to renovate the building, adding a 7,000-square-foot extension, with flexibility to further expand in the future. The facility will include state-of-the-art, climate-controlled storage for the museum’s more than 250,000-object collection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, tapestries and Cold War-era ephemera from the Soviet Union, East Bloc, China and other countries.

Interactivity, however, is the goal: so there will be spaces for “respite and inspiration,” Jampol said, such as a “scholar’s garden,” reading rooms and a library with a community learning lab and free coffee for visitors.

“The idea is to make it as engaging and comfortable as possible,” Jampol said. “Most archives are places that are very uncomfortable and uninspiring — think fluorescent lights blinking in a basement. The idea here is to open this up in a way that makes people want to be here. And focus on the content and not the space itself. We’re trying to create an experience that makes visitors want to go on an adventure.”

The Glorya Kaufman Community Center at the Wende Museum debuted this past fall.

(Stella Kalinina / For The Times)

The Wende’s Collections Department will be headquartered in the new building. The facility will also house a conservation center for endangered objects and paper archives, and will feature a digitization and imaging lab that will make the collections available online, free of charge.

It will also include reading rooms and research offices for up to 100 visiting scholars or artist fellows annually.

“The collections, instead of being hidden in a box, will be on full view,” Jampol said. “When you walk through, you won’t see boxes. You’ll see vases, tapestries, ceramics and more.”

Construction on the building, at 2311 W. El Segundo Blvd., starts May 15. Funds for the project came from the Arcadia Fund, the Kaufman Foundation and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, among other capital supporters.

The Wende Museum in Culver City opened its doors in 2017 inside a former 1949 atomic bomb shelter. It now draws about 25,000 visitors annually, who come to take in four exhibitions and more than 60 public programs. Admission is free.

Rapid expansion has been a hallmark of the Wende of late.

In September, it debuted a $17-million culture and wellness center offering free yoga, meditation, sound baths and therapy. The 7,500-square-foot facility was made possible with funding from the late philanthropist Glorya Kaufman who died a month before the building opened to the public. It’s called the Glorya Kaufman Community Center.

The Wende’s Glorya Kaufman Community Center includes a century old A-frame theater, an old MGM prop house, for free culture and wellness events.

(Stella Kalinina / For The Times)

In February, the Wende bought a three-bedroom house built in the 1940s adjacent to the museum’s campus that will be used as a live-work space for photographers in residence. It will include a community space for photography workshops and a post-production studio. The Nikita Foundation and the Victor Family Foundation provided funding.

It debuted a tiny home on its campus last fall, nicknamed “The Stevie” after donor Steve Markoff. It’s used for cross-disciplinary artist residencies.

A facility for interactive museum storage and research is not a new concept in Los Angeles.

The Autry Museum of the American West — after merging with the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in 2003 and since stewarding its collection of Indigenous art and artifacts — debuted a $32-million, 100,000-square-foot facility in Burbank in October 2022.

The so-called “Resources Center” was built to house, conserve and care for both museums’ collections in a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled and fire-safe environment. It also serves as a research destination for scholars, artists, tribal representatives and others to study the collections.

Jampol said that the project will enable the Wende to serve a wider swath of visitors, from specialists to the general public, and to venture outside of Culver City to engage other communities.

“It’s about making the collections both safe and accessible,” he said. “We looked to the Autry for inspiration alongside the V&A East in London — they both invite people in from the community, alongside scholars, to explore the collections. It’s the democratization of art — I love the ethos and spirit of that.”

Wrexham inflicted Coventry’s first league defeat of the season when they won an exciting encounter 3-2 at Stok Cae Ras in October.

“It was a massive game and a massive performance here,” Hyam said.

“It was a great game under the lights at the stadium – I think it was one of my first opportunities to play under the lights here.

“We beat them 3-2, which was a great game and a great occasion for this club.

“They’ve got some great, talented players at the top of the pitch but so have we.”

While reaching the play-offs is the main focus for Hyam there is also the prospect of inclusion in Scotland’s World Cup squad.

Hyam won his second senior cap – three years after making his debut – in Scotland’s 1-0 friendly defeat to the Ivory Coast at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium in March.

Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson said that continued good performances from the former Reading player would give him every chance of securing a place in Steve Clarke’s squad.

“One step at a time, one game at a time,” said Hyam.

“All I can focus on is my performances and hopefully staying fit and having a good end to the season.”

One of the most striking elements of Cardiff’s success this season has been the development of their young players.

Barry-Murphy signalled his intent in the first game of the season against Peterborough, naming the youngest Cardiff starting line-up for a league fixture this century.

His faith in the academy graduates has been repaid handsomely, with Dylan Lawlor, Cian Ashford, Joel Colwill, Isaak Davies and Ronan Kpakio all catching the eye at different points this season.

Playing in League One has benefited them enormously – as if they have dropped down a division to spend a season on loan together at a lower level.

What remains to be seen is how they deal with the Championship.

It is also easy to forget that vice-captain Rubin Colwill is still only 23. Having burst on to the scene as a teenager, the Wales attacking midfielder has come of age this season.

“It’s been an unbelievable season for everyone involved,” Colwill said.

“A lot of the young lads have had really good seasons, and obviously getting promoted for everyone is amazing. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of it.”

Centre-back Lawlor has arguably had the biggest impact of those fledgling talents this season, making his Wales debut and looking remarkably assured over the course of his five caps to date.

The 20-year-old has been linked with a move away – with German giants Bayern Munich among the clubs reportedly interested – and Cardiff will do well to keep him this summer.

But Barry-Murphy has shown how well he can work with young players, not only in the Welsh capital but during his time in charge of Manchester City’s Under-21s, where he nurtured the likes of Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers.

Crucially, Cardiff will be protected financially should big clubs come calling for Lawlor, who signed a three-year contract extension last August to keep him at the club until 2028.

Match of the Day pundits Wayne Rooney and Danny Murphy discuss how “two top players” in Erling Haaland and Gabriel went head-to-head in Manchester City’s 2-1 victory against Arsenal, with the Norwegian striker reaching “unplayable” levels.

MATCH REPORT: Manchester City 2-1 Arsenal

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