Bulgarian skipper Stiliyan Petrov and his Aston Villa assured themselves a trip to Wembley after a dramatic second half comeback that dispatched Reading off through a John Carew hat-trick.

Villa had bitter memories from their last Wembley trip, after losing to Manchester United on the Carling Cup final, but a confident display against Reading on March 7 means that an FA Cup semi final is in the bag.

Reading, who are having a rather difficult time in the English Championship, came out as the better team at the end of the first 45 minutes of play and appeared to be set for another FA Cup shock as a brace of goals from Shane Long put the team 2-0 up at half time.

Their more affluent and prominent opponents looked shell shocked, and deservedly so.

Petrov and co came out a completely resurgent team at the end of the break however, and just a minute into proceedings and Ashley Young put them back into the fray with a goal in the 46^th minute.

Villa then regrouped and went into a massive offensive. They managed to score no less than three goals in less than 10 minutes with Carew scoring in the 50^th and 56^th minute respectively, putting Villa 3-2 up.

The momentum remained with Villa as Reading were left with no countermeasure against the onslaught. Petrov had an influential match, while Emile Heskey missed to get his own name on the score-sheet for the Birmingham side.

The final blow for Reading came two minutes into injury time as Carew scored his hat-trick and effectively put the game well and truly beyond the grasp of the Championship side.

According to the club's website, this Aston Villa victory ended Martin O'Neill's bizarre statistic of never having won a game in March with Villa since he took over from David O'Leary in 2006.