Category: FA Cup

• Eze scores and assists in 3-0 FA Cup win at Fulham
• ‘We lost every duel until Eze’s amazing goal’

Oliver Glasner praised the impact of Eberechi Eze after the Crystal Palace forward transformed a tie Fulham had initially dominated with two moments of skill to tilt it in his side’s favour. Eze opened the scoring in the 34th minute and created a second goal four minutes later to leave Fulham deflated and all but seal Palace’s place in the FA Cup semi-finals.

“The first 15, 20 minutes we had no structure in our game,” Glasner said. “We lost almost every single ball, we lost almost every single duel and we really struggled. We lost the ball too easily, too quickly. We were too long on the ball.

Continue reading...

Some players’ futures are in doubt but beating Bournemouth could help those they leave behind

Pep Guardiola is a basketball aficionado and has often been seen courtside in America trying to learn from one of the world’s most intense sports. The Manchester City manager holds Michael Jordan in high esteem and it feels as if the next two months may be the club’s version of the basketball legend’s Last Dance documentary for some of their senior players. The FA Cup is the NBA championship for those wondering where they may start next season.

City face a second trip of the season to Bournemouth, where their 32-match unbeaten run ended in November, hoping to reach a semi-final at Wembley for the seventh successive year. Guardiola and his side have barely recovered since losing Rodri, City’s Jordan according to his coach, and a second defeat by Andoni Iraola’s men on Sunday would remove any chance of a trophy for the Spaniard and his ageing charges this season. Jordan was asked for one great final year with the Chicago Bulls. Guardiola, who regards the Club World Cup as the start of the 2025-26 campaign, needs two months from his creaking squad.

Continue reading...

Championship club face elite opposition in Aston Villa but the Lancashire city is gripped by Cup fever

‘I’ve had to tell my mum not to bother with Mother’s Day,” quips Preston fan Tom Bates. The 29-year-old has forgone the purchase of flowers, cards and the prospect of a Sunday roast to buy a ticket at Deepdale for North End’s first FA Cup quarter-final in 59 years.

The past six decades have brought Preston six relegations and promotions, a third and fourth division title and a solitary Lancashire Senior Cup. Since they triumphed in the League One playoff final in 2015 their seasons have been humdrum: they have finished between seventh and 14th each season and this is the first time they have got beyond the fourth round in either cup. It has given supporters such as Bates, who saw his first match when he was two, little to celebrate. The visit of the Champions League side Aston Villa to Lancashire will be one of the biggest days in the club’s recent history, played out in front of a vociferous crowd of 23,400. A tie at Wembley awaits the winners.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

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

FA Cup (statistics from all competitions)

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

• 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”.

Continue reading...

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

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

• ‘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.

Continue reading...