The fourth round of the Football Association Cup was played over the weekend. The hierarchy has been respected for the majority of the fixtures expect one major shock on the Northeastern part of England. Liverpool lost its third straight game to a Championship team Wolverhampton.
Liverpool 1-2 Wolverhampton
Coach Klopp comments. Is the club in crisis now?
“Cup games like this are always difficult [and] in our situation, after losing two games, not full of confidence, not flying through the league. We made a lot of changes, of course, most of them because we couldn’t do it differently, but a few because we wanted. f this is the lowest point of my Liverpool time until now – I don’t know. But if it is, it’s the perfect point to turn because it’s not possible to go lower. That’s all we have to think about now. It’s not that hard but it feels in this moment – and is absolutely right – bad. We have to use it. In this moment, it’s not the right time to talk too much about being positive and optimistic.
from tomorrow onwards we have to prepare for the Chelsea game. The opponent has the highest quality in the Premier League. It will not be an easy job, but hopefully before Tuesday, we all can recover and the crowd can recover and look forward to the game. That would really make sense – it’s a home game against the leader of the league, so we need everybody for this game”.
Chelsea 4-0 Brentford
Coach Conte is pleased with the young players’s performance:
“I must be pleased because when you change nine players you can see all the players, all the squad are totally involved in our idea of football, our project. That’s very important.
This competition until now has been an opportunity for me to put players in that are not playing a lot in this period for us. It was also very important to see the right reply of these players and it happened. I’m very happy.”
Crystal Palace 0-3 Manchester City
A satisfactory victory for coach Guardiola:
“We’re in the next round which we are pleased about.
The cup is always complicated in a way because we started well but then had a difficult 15 minutes until we scored the first goal. We didn’t take some of our early chances but that’s been happening all season. The important thing is we created a lot of chances, did score three goals and also kept a clean sheet.”
Southampton 0-5 Arsenal
Coach Wenger on Walcott’s hat-trick:
“It was pleasant to watch because we had individual strong performances and collectively as well. I liked the fact that we didn’t lose our concentration. It didn’t become easy when it was 3-0, we kept playing the way we want to play.
It was pleasant to watch and it was a good opportunity to see players who have come back, like Welbeck, be so convincing. Theo is a good finisher and the chances we created were very good. When he finishes with one touch, he’s very quick to respond.”
Tottenham 4-3 Wycombe
Coach Pochettino on the comeback win. The Spurs were down 3-2 with less than 5 minutes left when Ali equaled and then Son gave the victory. What a finish!
“Unbelievable, crazy, full credit to Wycombe, they played better than us in the first half, the second half was different, we scored four goals, that’s always difficult and I think we deserved in the end to be in the next round. However, if you analyse the game, it was an unbelievable game.
Maybe we’re playing a League Two team but in the FA Cup it’s impossible to demonstrate that you are at different level. At the moment when they scored for 3-2 it was tough but the team always believed, like in the second half against Manchester City, we showed character. There are a lot of positives to take and we’re into the next round.”
Manchester United will compete for a spot into the fifth round as the club faces Wigan later today.
