🔗 Share this article

Against a backdrop of sleet, flurries, and a biting breeze off the waters of the Humber, alongside a resolute Hull City side pushing hard for a top-flight place, this had all the ingredients of a difficult night's task for the visitors.

"We could have scored more but the opposition are a strong team and it was a difficult tie; I am very pleased with the performance," he said. "Hull City is very special to me so it was great to get a positive reception from both sets of fans. The application of the lads was excellent."

The Chelsea manager has this city dear to him, considering some of his relatives are from Hull and his enjoyable period in management of the Championship club. His happy connection continued with a magnificent performance from his team, who in the end strolled into the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Clinical Edge Seals Comfortable Victory

Three days after surrendering a two-goal advantage in the Premier League, there was a hint of fragility about Chelsea going into this intriguing tie. The packed home support evidently sensed it too, but Rosenior's men navigated the task perfectly.

Rosenior rang the changes, enacting seven of them to his XI. The tie might and perhaps ought to have been decided long before it actually was, with two the Brazilian winger and the forward at fault for missing glorious chances to put their side ahead in the first half.

However, luckily for the visitors, Pedro Neto was in a much more ruthless frame of mind. He opened the scoring with a spectacular distance effort, which proved to be the spark for his team to assume command of the match. By the final whistle, they had four, with Neto scoring three of them for a superb hat-trick.

Delap's Response and Impact

Hull displayed great spirit all game, but the better opportunities always came to the visitors. The winger should have broken the scoring when he rounded goalkeeper the Hull stopper before unbelievably firing over. Delap then had a comparable horror moment in front of goal against his former club.

He blocked a Phillips's clearance which bounced off the crossbar, and he started to run away believing the ball had crossed the line. It hadn’t, and by the time he understood, Hull's backline had responded to avert the danger.

Delap had his head in his hands after that moment, but he was immensely instrumental from that point onward, registering three assists. The first was for the first goal as his pass teed up Neto to score from outside the box. Six minutes after the restart, it was 2-0 as Neto's corner went directly in through the keeper's legs.

Contest Sealed and Focus Turns

Soon after the second, the match was put beyond doubt as a magnificent dribble from Delap laid on his teammate to slide into an unguarded goal. Neto then finished his treble as the provider once again delivered the crucial pass for the attacker to calmly convert by a helpless Phillips.

By that stage, the effort Hull had put in in the first half-hour had long since erased. Their priority must now switch back to securing a promotion to the Premier League under Sergej Jakirovic, who left out several key players with that goal in mind.

"I think we deserved at least one goal but if we play like this we will be in a strong position in the league," the Hull manager commented. "Never surrender, maybe in the next games this can be a good lesson of how we should play."

There was great effort to the end, and they almost got a consolation when Lewis Koumas hit a the upright in stoppage time. But this was Chelsea’s evening, and another positive step forward for their new manager at a stadium he is familiar with very well.

FA Cup Omens Are Promising

That made for an in the end routine evening’s performance, and the FA Cup-shaped signs are positive from here for the winners. They have played Hull on three other occasions in this competition in the past ten years and every single time, they have progressed to reach the final. Much still work in that regard, but this was another huge tick for the Chelsea boss.