Chelsea's Olivier Giroud relishing Arsenal reunion with Alexis Sanchez in FA Cup final

Olivier Giroud says he is looking forward to being reunited with his former Arsenal team-mate Alexis Sanchez at the FA Cup final.

Giroud and Sanchez both left Arsenal in the January transfer window, with the French striker joining Chelsea while the Chilean moved to Manchester United.

The pair will now come up against each other in May when Chelsea take on United at Wembley.

Giroud scored the opener in Chelsea's 2-0 win over Southampton in the semi-finals on Sunday while, a day earlier, Sanchez scored one and helped create the winner as Tottenham were beaten.

"I will be happy to see him," Giroud said. "I’m going to put the FA Cup on the side and focus on the championship now, but it’s always special to play against some players especially when we have good memories."

Giroud started the FA Cup semi-final over Alvaro Morata, in part, due to the Spaniard's miss against Burnley on Thursday night and because of the Frenchman's fine form of late.

But the 31-year-old insisted the competition between the two Chelsea strikers is "fair" and necessary to ensure both play to their maximum level.

"Competition is always good, especially for strikers, because you need to keep maximum 100 per cent give your best. It helps to step up and help the team win the games. It’s a fair competition," Giroud said.

"We’ve done well when we played Alvaro when we played Burnley, we’ve done well with Eden, with Willy, with Pedro, whoever is playing alongside us strikers we always try to combine to do work the boss is expecting us to do."

Giroud has now scored four goals in all competitions since making the move to Chelsea, and he added: "Yeah, I feel very good.

"I said when I signed here that I needed adaptation time, a quick one because I wanted to be efficient quickly for the team, I didn't want to waste time to be ready.

"I think I’ve got a good understanding with the boys on the pitch, good team cohesion, we do a good job for each other and we can see it on the pitch."