Reading vs Arsenal: Aaron Ramsey seeks FA Cup salvation to end spell of emotional anguish

Arsenal midfielder targets Wembley success after tough year blighted with hamstring injury and his grandmother’s death

Aaron Ramsey scores Arsenal’s winner against Hull City in last season’s FA Cup final at Wembley (Getty Images)

It has not been an easy season for Aaron Ramsey, for two very different reasons.

Arsenal’s Welsh midfielder was the hero of last year, their best player and the man who settled the FA Cup final after 109 draining minutes. Whatever else Ramsey achieves at Arsenal he will always be remembered for ending their nine-year trophy drought on that breathless Wembley afternoon.

If that was the high-point of Ramsey’s career the 11 months since have been very different. He has suffered three separate hamstring injuries – in September, December and February – and has also had to deal with the more serious and personal matter of his grandmother passing away. He has only just started to find his best form again; he has scored four goals in the last month and in his celebrations he paid tribute to his late grandmother.

That is the context – sporting resurgence amid personal pain – for Ramsey’s return to Wembley this afternoon. “I have been on an emotional roller-coaster of late,” Ramsey says. “I have had a tough few weeks.”

Ramsey is describing with real emotion the impression his maternal grandmother Eileen – “Nani Leany” – left upon him. “She meant an awful lot to me,” he says. “She was an incredible woman. She lost her husband early in her life and had to raise seven kids on her own and in those days it was an incredibly difficult thing to do. She was always happy, making jokes, and I have that sort of outlook on life.”

The support that she gave Ramsey is very clear from everything that he says. “She always believed in me and gave me reassurance,” he says. “She used to take me down to games and watch when I was eight or nine, she would always be asking about how I was doing.” ‘Leany’ did not often come to Arsenal games, so Ramsey made sure she could see him. “She would always complain that it wasn’t on ‘normal TV’. So I got her Sky to watch a few games.”

So when Ramsey scored his last two goals, for Wales in Haifa and for Arsenal in Burnley, he looked to the sky to remember the woman who meant so much to him.

Having also scored against West Ham United and Monaco in March, Ramsey is now in his best form since that remarkable run in late 2013 which was the peak of his career to date. Arsenal play their best football with him in the team, as no one else can provide that thrust through the middle or that early anticipation of space.

Last season Ramsey was brilliant before a thigh injury on Boxing Day which cost him more than three and a half months of football. This year, the problem has been three separate hamstring injuries, each one occurring just when Ramsey was starting to find his rhythm.

Aaron Ramsey in training earlier this week (Getty Images)

The first came in the north London derby in late September. While Ramsey returned to the team after just three weeks, it was not for another month or so before he started to rediscover his best form. In early December Ramsey was playing well again, scoring at Stoke before finding the net twice – one a wonderful half-volley – at Galatasaray in Istanbul. But at half-time that evening, he felt some tightness in his hamstring and had to come off.

It took another six weeks for Ramsey to return in mid-January and even then it was in his fifth appearance back, against Leicester City, that he limped off again, nine minutes after coming on. Only now, after another three-week absence, is Ramsey back to his best, and it is with a touch of frustration that he describes his season to date.

“When I do come back from injuries, it takes a few games to get going and then I seem to get back into it a bit, but then I break down again,” Ramsey says, giving the story of his season. “So, it has been a bit stop-start for me.”

Aaron Ramsey scores Arsenal's only goal in the win at Burnley (Getty Images)

The last few weeks, though, set up the prospect of a strong finish to the Premier League season, and a repeat of last year’s Cup win. “I am feeling good at the moment, feeling confident,” Ramsey says. “Even with all the injuries I have had I have still got nine goals this season, and a few assists, and hopefully now I can finish the season strongly. Hopefully we can win the Cup again.”

The experience of last year is an incentive but it is also a platform. The feel around the side is very different from the suffocating atmosphere of last season’s Cup run. Arsenal went behind to Wigan Athletic in the semi-final and Hull City in the final, needing late equalisers both times before eventually scraping through, on penalties against Wigan, then in the final in extra-time.

Ramsey looks back on that semi-final, one year and six days ago, and its heavy pressure. “We felt the pressure, going through that period without a trophy, and the big build-up before the game.”

Ramsey has suffered three separate hamstring injuries this season (GETTY IMAGES)

The final, was even worse, with Arsenal conceding twice before dragging themselves level. They were 11 minutes away from penalties when Olivier Giroud back-heeled the ball in the box and Ramsey stabbed it first-time into the bottom corner. Ramsey burst away in glee before collapsing on his back, mobbed by grateful red shirts.

“I was knackered,” he remembers, “I was just running about and it all caught up with me so I needed a couple of seconds to get my breath back and realise what I’ve actually done.”

His winners’ medal is in his cabinet in his office at home, along with his boots and shirt from that day. They are mementoes of a time when Arsenal could not win anything, a time Ramsey wants to leave in the past. “We haven’t got that sort of pressure on us now,” he says, “We just have to focus on ourselves.”