Category: FA Cup

Borrowing from the All Blacks, manager says the power of psychology has helped his side recover from 7-0 drubbing

Were Fabian Hürzeler in any doubt about the importance of the FA Cup to Brighton fans, he received a gentle reminder when back in his home town of Munich. Hürzeler’s short international break, among family and friends, received a polite but pointed interruption. “Walking through the city, one of the Brighton supporters called my name and said he’s really looking forward to the game,” said the club’s head coach. “He said that we have to give everything in this game, and of course you feel it, but for me it’s important that we don’t make it artificial excitement.”

Hürzeler, born a decade after Albion lost the 1983 final to Manchester United in a replay, can be excused for not knowing the lore of Steve Foster’s headband, Tony Grealish’s hirsute captaincy and the striker Gordon Smith’s “must score” miss. There are always the owner, Tony Bloom, and the club’s time-served staffers to run through the details. In any case, Brighton relived that Wembley day two seasons ago, another hard-luck loss to United in the semi-finals, this time on penalties.

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• Striker lacerated ear in incident against Millwall
• Mateta back for FA Cup quarter-final at Fulham

Jean-Philippe Mateta will make his first Crystal Palace appearance on Saturday since being hospitalised with a lacerated ear, with Oliver Glasner confident the striker has not been psychologically affected by the incident.

Mateta was kicked in the head by Millwall’s goalkeeper Liam Roberts in the FA Cup fifth round four weeks ago and required 25 stitches. Roberts, who was sent off, received a six-match ban.

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Nottingham Forest visit Brighton while Preston can see Wembley within reach as they host Aston Villa

FA Cup (statistics from all competitions)

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• Striker sustained hip injury for New Zealand
• Nuno Espírito Santo: ‘He has been to a specialist’

Chris Wood will miss Nottingham Forest’s FA Cup quarter-final against Brighton after sustaining an injury with New Zealand, Nuno Espírito Santo has said.

Wood has been in excellent form with 18 goals in the Premier League, where Forest sit third as they close in on Champions League qualification. He scored a hat-trick when Forest thrashed Brighton 7-0 in the league last month.

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• Manchester City boss complained ‘ball is not proper’
• Arteta also complained about one used in Carabao Cup

The FA Cup ball criticised by Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola “delivers against all of the testing requirements”, the Football Association has said.

Guardiola compared the ball negatively to those used in the Premier League and Champions League after his side’s fifth-round victory over Plymouth on Saturday and said it was “not proper”.

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What Ruben Amorim should do now, Danny Welbeck and an unlikely England call, and why Michael Oliver was right

“Pick the kids!” is a frequent cry when a team are playing poorly, and generally speaking it’s an incorrect one: the last thing a young player needs is to be hurled into a mess of the sort Manchester United are in. But sometimes it works – Mikel Arteta, for example, struggling at Arsenal, eventually promoted Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe because he had no other choice, and hasn’t looked back since. Now Ruben Amorim must make a similar call. A lack of alternatives forced him to persevere with Rasmus Højlund, but over the past week Chido Obi-Martin has earned a chance, contributing at Everton before asserting properly against Fulham, on both occasions more dangerous than Højlund, in less time. And, given United’s league season is over – and, given also, their lack of pace in defence – it might be worth seeing what Ayden Heaven can do, seeking to inject momentum and good feeling into a two-month stretch that threatens to be enervating in the extreme. Daniel Harris

Match report: Manchester United 1-1 Fulham (aet, 3-4 pens)

Match report: Newcastle 1-2 Brighton

Match report: Crystal Palace 3-1 Millwall

Match report: Manchester City 3-1 Plymouth Argyle

Match report: Preston 3-0 Burnley

Match report: Bournemouth 1-1 Wolves (aet, B’mouth win 5-4 on pens)

Match report: Aston Villa 2-0 Cardiff City

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• Manager restates ambition to win Premier League
• ‘I’m not naive, that’s why I’m here’

Ruben Amorim hit back at Wayne Rooney after Manchester United crashed out of the FA Cup, by ­claiming that being the club’s head coach aged 40 showed he was not naive.

Rooney, who is United’s record goalscorer, called Amorim naive for saying after the holders’ elimination from the Cup on penalties by Fulham that the club’s long-term goal is to win the Premier League.

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• FA Cup red card set to deny Gordon Carabao Cup final
• Brighton manager praises striker Danny Welbeck

Eddie Howe hinted that Newcastle might appeal against Anthony Gordon’s “harsh” straight red card in their home FA Cup defeat by Brighton but seemed virtually resigned to being without the England winger in the Carabao Cup final.

Gordon was sent off for raising two hands and shoving the Brighton defender Jan Paul van Hecke in the head in the 83rd minute of the 2-1 defeat and is set for an automatic three-game ban. It would rule out one of Newcastle’s leading players for the Wembley showpiece against Liverpool in two weeks’ time.

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In the squeaky posterior time of this FA Cup fifth-round penalty shootout, Victor Lindelöf and Joshua Zirkzee were the unfortunate ones whose kicks were saved, ending ­Manchester United’s trophy defence.

Fulham won the shootout 4-3 with a kick to spare and the visitors marginally deserved their passage, though this was a slog through 120 minutes of meagre fare that was no advertisement for the world’s ­oldest knockout competition.

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Calvin Bassey gave Fulham the lead and Bruno Fernandes equalised, before Bernd Leno made decisive shoot-out saves from Victor Lindelöf and Joshua Zirkzee

Fulham, meanwhile, will have restored players who were rested for this match. With their Premier League status secure, they’ve no reason not to go all-out for the Cup, and given the teams left, they’ve a decent chance of making something happen. Bassey is exactly the kind of centre-back Hojlund can spend an entire match fruitless fighting; Robinson is a one-man left-flank; and Iwobi has excellent ball-carrying capabilities.

Amorim has little in the way of options. He’ll be devo’d about Dorgu, banned for the first of three games – already, his new signing had made a difference, giving United width, balance and physicality, doing the right things and building a promising partnership with Bruno Fernandes. Mazraoui, though a lovely footballer, offers little attacking threat from wing-back, likewise Diogo Dalot on the other side, while there could scarcely be less pace behind the nominal centre-forward, Rasmus Hojlund, both Eriksen and Joshua Zirzkee looking like they run in a wind-tunnel.

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When the dust finally settled on a tie featuring two red cards and an endless stream of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it drama crowned by Danny Welbeck’s extra-time winner, Brighton were in the quarter-finals.

Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon, meanwhile, was out of this month’s Carabao Cup final after being shown a straight red card deep in a second half that also featured Alexander Isak’s late withdrawal, accompanied by a physiotherapist, just to exacerbate Eddie Howe’s worries.

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• ‘Sometimes you need to lose to grow,’ says manager
• Manchester United face Fulham in FA Cup on Sunday

Ruben Amorim has said the challenges faced in his turbulent first three months in charge of Manchester United have made him a “more complete manager”. The Portuguese took over in November and has overseen five victories in 16 Premier League matches, leaving them 14th.

One of those wins was at Fulham, who visit Old Trafford on Sunday in the FA Cup fifth round. The holders face a crucial week with a last-16 first leg trip to Real Sociedad in the Europa League on Thursday with redundancies off the pitch and poor performances on it.

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The hosts were forced to come from behind against a spirited Argyle side but a brace from Nico O’Reilly and Kevin De Bruyne’s late strike saw them into the quarter-final draw

• Read Will Unwin’s match report from the Etihad Stadium

“It’s Manchester City, it’s away, the team which has dominated the Premier League for the last seven or eight years so it truly feels like something very, very big,” said Plymouth’s manager in his pre-match press conference.

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• Mateta hurt during FA Cup fifth round victory
• Striker discharged from hospital with 25 stitches

Oliver Glasner described the challenge by the Millwall goalkeeper, Liam Roberts, that sent Jean-Philippe Mateta to hospital as “a very, very serious foul play”, but said he did not believe Roberts had intended to cause any injury.

“It was tough to see it,” Glasner, the Crystal Palace manager, said. “I don’t want to see it any more. Just imagine if he hits his face straight, with all this power and the studs, it could have been the end of JP’s career.”

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As he prepares to face Manchester United in the FA Cup on Sunday, the midfielder talks tactics, up and downs and being part of Norway’s ‘little golden generation’

As Fulham finalise their preparations for Sunday’s trip to Manchester United in the fifth round of the FA Cup, Sander Berge is thinking about how to handle adversity. “It taught me a lot about myself,” the midfielder says, recalling how spirits could have sagged when he was part of unsuccessful fights for survival with Burnley and Sheffield United.

“When you’re struggling every day it’s difficult. That’s a time to show character more than ever. You demand the ball, you take pride in going out there and showing you have the ability to stay at that level. It’s about who you want to be.”

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