A poor pass across the West Ham box from captain Gilly Flaherty helped Chloe Kelly intercept to double her side’s lead soon after. Making only her first start since a knee injury ruled her out last May, Kelly was still not quite at full speed on the right wing but she has not lost her clinical instincts in front of goal, and her passionate celebrations betrayed the long road to recovery she has been on, as she eyes a spot on England’s Euros squad this summer.

To their credit, West Ham ensured things remained tense when they pulled one back just before half-time, their pressing efforts rewarded when Lisa Evans combined with Adriana Leon to slot the ball home. They were clinging on and Tameka Yallop almost found the equaliser at the hour-mark when she was played through by Evans, but her wide attempt was the last of West Ham’s clear-cut chances.

Lauren Hemp put the tie beyond their reach minutes later with a solo goal that epitomised the winning mentality and quality that separates the top sides from the rest, pick-pocketing Lucy Parker and outrunning Grace Fisk to score with an off-balance left-footed effort. Her second and City’s fourth came in injury time on the break, when a defeated West Ham could only look on in anguish at their wasted efforts.

City will face either Arsenal or Chelsea, who play their semi-final on Sunday, in the final on May 15.

Analysis: Big three’s stranglehold on the FA Cup demonstrates their dominance of English football

Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea stretched their grip on the FA Cup trophy with Saturday’s result to nearly a decade and the results in this season’s contest suggest other clubs remain a way off changing that.

While in the league we have seen top teams slip up – with Arsenal’s shock loss to Birmingham, City struggling for form early on, and Chelsea being outsmarted by Reading – in knockout ties their clinical quality separates them from the rest of the pack. 

City are the case in point. Though they trail third-placed United by three points in the league, put four past them in the fifth round of the FA Cup and slotted four past Everton in the last eight ahead of this semi-final.

Similarly on Saturday, though West Ham have won more WSL points than ever before during this WSL campaign, showing improved consistency, they were still no match for City. Manager Olli Harder believes the gap in investment stops smaller clubs from challenging them across the domestic competitions.

“Consistency and quality [separates them], as simple as that,” he said post-match. “You pay for those things. We know that it’s no secret. Not to say that we haven’t got consistency in quality, but they have an abundance. They have more quality in certain moments. We saw that again today and good on them. This is the benchmark. This is where all clubs need to get ready to go. They deserve to be in the top. The top three [will have a] stranglehold until we get ourselves up to a good enough level. And I mean “we” being the rest of the league, not West Ham specific.”

Harder added that it was up to individual clubs to put in the work to make clubs sustainable from a financial standpoint: “There’s no God given right to be in the top three only because you spend money. They have the investment, there’s been time, the infrastructure, the whole package is there. So how do you close the gap? Well, let’s start with getting more people in the stadiums so we can generate more income which becomes sustainable. And part of our job is to provide a product for that to happen so we can fill these seats then it gives us a better opportunity to close the gap.”

Match details

West Ham (5-4-1): Arnold; Evans, Fisk, Flaherty, Longhurst, Svitkova; Parker, Brynjarsdottir, Hasegawa (Walker 78), Yallop (Snerle 71); Leon, Subs: Moore, Wyne, Stringer, Filis, Joel, Houssein, Cissoko

Manchester City (4-3-3): Roebuck; Bronze, Kennedy, Greenwood, Stokes;  Coombs (Angeldahl 80), Walsh, Weir (Stanway 70); Kelly (Raso 62), White (Shaw 70), Hemp, Subs: Taieb, Keating, Mace

Referee: Abigail Byrne