FA Cup round 5: Chelsea 5-1 Manchester City
After two consecutive losses at home against title rivals Leicester and Tottenham, the Citizens were coming to London with hopes to regain some momentum against Chelsea. Certainly Manchester City presented a much reorganized team with many youngsters in the starting XI but still this kind of performance must be taken seriously. Manchester City seems to have all difficulties in the Premier League and we will see on Wednesday in the UEFA Champions League when they travel to Ukraine to play the Dynamo Kiev. 888sport predicts that Manchester City is favorite for the game with a slight advantage. You can find there odds for all upcoming Champions League matches.
Coach Chelsea Hiddink shares his fought on consecutive great performances from his squad:
‘If you win 5-1 last week, if you have an okay performance and result in Paris, and now today 5-1 against Man City then of course it’s a boost for the confidence of the players. It’s good to see that.
‘You have to be very aware to not make stupid mistakes or get sloppy or complacent. We got sloppy with our organisation when they equalised but we had a very good reaction in the second half. It was key that we started well in the second half and got an early second or third goal. When the team does the job it has to do – tactical disciplined and organised defensively, and pressing high – then automatically the quality will show.
We mustn’t forget the tradition of English football. I remember watching the FA Cup as a youngster on TV, it’s the temple of football. Winning the FA Cup is beautiful worldwide. We must be careful not to devalue it.’
Coach Pellegrini admits he did not have much hope to win the FA Cup tie:
“Unfortunately for us, we couldn’t play another game and we couldn’t have more players fit for this game so we knew it was a very difficult chance to continue in the FA Cup but because the game was played today we couldn’t progress.
“If we play on Saturday it’s better for us because we have to play for England in the Champions League on Wednesday so it’s better for England. The second thing is that we have six players injured and we don’t have more than 13 players so we could not take the risk to continue having injuries to the players that we have. “We played a very good 45 minutes in which we equalised the game. After that we threw away the game in five minutes by conceding two goals too easily.
