Sanchez double fires Arsenal into the final

Alexis Sanchez scored twice on Saturday evening as Arsenal managed to fight off Reading at Wembley. For the second successive season the Gunners had managed to reach the semi-finals of the FA Cup, and after a 2-1 victory after extra time last night, marched into another final. It was a difficult game and one we should have been able to win quite comfortably considering the opposition. Reading are near the bottom end of the Championship but they put up a great fight as we put in a similarly poor display to the semi against Wigan last season as the Royals made it extremely hard for us to play. However rather fortuitously, we managed to score the winning goal in the first half of extra time.

Alexis Sanchez scored twice as Arsenal reached the final of the FA Cup.

If you consider Arsenal's recent form then you'll realise that Saturday's semi-final was far from what we've become accustomed to lately. Our build-up play was slower than usual and we lacked width, especially on the right hand side. We struggled to get any sort of rhythm going throughout the match but we did create the better chances throughout the game and due to that we deserved to go through. Reading impressed me heavily. The last time the two sides met it was that famous 7-5 result in the League cup and although there was no repeat of that this time round they did look dangerous. Similarly to Burnley in our previous game, they looked to get the ball to their wide players and put balls in to the penalty area. Meanwhile with the work rate of Jamie Mackie, the defence had to be vary.

However one of the reasons I think we struggled, despite Mertesacker's lack of pace when Reading put the ball in behind, was the team selection. Undoubtedly those Arsenal players selected have quality way above that of the Reading players, but a few players hadn't played in a while and that could be told. Wojciech Szczesny did himself no favours in goal with a slight error for the goal. He hasn't played since our last cup tie and after failing to stop Gareth McClearly's effort, he reaffirmed why David Ospina has been playing lately. I don't think the defence necerssarily had a bad game but it didn't help changing around what had been a solid back four in the League. Debuchy had to play 120 minutes in his first game for three months whilst Kieran Gibbs was shaky at left back after a month on the bench. Hector Bellerin has been playing brilliantly recently so it was a bit bizarre that he wasn't in the squad at all. Changes were expected and I can understand those that were made but it seemed to upset the rhythm of the team a little.

The other change was Danny Welbeck in for Olivier Giroud. Welbeck scored against United in the last round and despite Giroud's incredible form he was on the bench. Many slated Welbeck's performance and it wasn't the best but he was always looking for the ball. He appeared to be in the areas where Reading were crowding us out though and that's why he had little impact. Giroud came in on the second half and was able to give us a more direct presence after struggling in the second period as we had to withstand constant Reading pressure.

It was an extremely poor performance and that was down to not only the changes to the side, and the way Reading played, but because we lacked width. Over the last few games Aaron Ramsey has been playing out on the right and has struggled a little despite his goal against Burnley. In the semi-final though he was ineffective. He got dragged inside too much and slowed our play down and at times we were playing without a right winger. With Hector Bellerin making overlapping runs it works but with Debuchy who is a lot more defensive we had no presence down that right. In my opinion Ramsey had a poor game which was summed up by him smacking the post from a matter of yards out when it looked easier to score than miss. Thankfully on the left we did have width though, and it came as no surprise that that was where the goals came from.

Alexis Sanchez has been brilliant this season and celebrated his PFA Player of the Year nomination with two goals at Wembley. The first was of great quality. Mesut Ozil picked out Sanchez who was brilliantly composed to calmly slot the ball between Federici's legs. The second goal was rather fortuitious though. Federici in the Reading goal had had a brilliant game, most notably he'd made a great save to deny Gabriel in the second half but his error cost his side the game. Alexis cut inside and then fired a tame effort towards goal but the Australian keeper let it through his legs and into the net. It wasn't a nice way to win a game but when you're in the semi-final you don't care how you get through.

The quality of our attacking play was quite poor but when we did look good it was because Mesut Ozil was on the ball. Everything that we seemed to create came through the German and it was one of his better displays in an Arsenal shirt. He assisted both goals, with the first being of excellent vision. Instead of finding the simple ball he looked up and played a lovely ball into Sanchez. He almost scored a free-kick and twice set-up Gabriel who almost helped himself to two goals. Such was the performance of Mesut Ozil that the compilation below is effectively a match highlights package from the game if you exclude the Reading goal.

Whether Arsenal deserved to win is arguable. Neither side created any significant danger to each other but Reading gave us too much space and that consequently led to both goals as Sanchez was allowed to drift inside and make runs off the ball leaving us with space for chances to be scored from. Francis Coquelin didn't have the best of games on what is a very large Wembley pitch and the midfield on occasion were quite sloppy. Regardless of that though we managed to reach the final in which we'll face Aston Villa after they beat Liverpool on Sunday.

Before that though we need to finish strongly in the League. Chelsea will be our biggest test in recent months and hopefully we'll able to continue our winning run and extend our lead over Manchester United next weekend by beating Jose Mourinho's side.

The team's line-ups:

Reading: Federici, Gunter, Hector, Pearce, Obita, McCleary, Williams, Chalobah(105), Robson-Kanu(90), Mackie, Pogrebnyak(111).
Subs: Andersen, Kelly, Cooper, Norwood, Karacan(90), Cox(106), Yakubu(111).

Arsenal: Szczesny, Debuchy, Mertesacker(63), Koscielny, Gibbs, Coquelin(101), Cazorla, Ramsey, Ozil, Sanchez, Welbeck(72).
Subs: Ospina, Gabriel(63), Monreal, Flamini, Wilshere, Walcott(101) Giroud(72).

My man of the match: Alexis Sanchez.

Referee: Martin Atkinson.
Attendance: 84,081.