Israel Saria
Eurosport –
All the reaction from Saturday’s FA Cup fifth round games, with Ray Wilkins insisting Chelsea are united despite the recent upheaval at the club.
Watford 1-3 Chelsea
Brendan Rogers: “We have given a world-class squad a fantastic game. We were excellent tonight. With 20 minutes to go, we were 1-0 up and looking comfortable. I couldn’t have asked for any more from my team. The boys have worked really hard and they were really disciplined today.”
Ray Wilkins: “It has been a tough week so it was vital that we all pulled together. We have a great collectiveness here despite what people have said. We have been the whipping boys recently, but the players, the board, the staff, we are all together. You need to have some guts and stick together when you go behind and we showed plenty of that today.”
Sheffield United 1-1 Hull City
Kevin Blackwell: “These lads (the Sheffield United players) don’t lose many games. They know what it takes to win games and stay in games. That means we have a chance to win games. Today they showed some real courage against a side that has powered into the Premier League and powered through the Premier League.”
Phil Brown: “It was a great cup tie. But we are disappointed we have got another game. The next week is going to be interesting with Tottenham, replay, Blackburn, but that is life. You become a victim of your own success to a certain extent but we are in the hat for the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.”
West Ham 1-1 Middlesbrough
Gianfranco Zola: “We had so many chances that I was afraid we weren’t going to score. We didn’t deserve to lose and a draw may have been fair. A replay is not great news but we want to go through. It will be tougher but we want to go through.”
Gareth Southgate: “It was probably a fair result. I was pleased with how we played, the quality was good and I was pleased how we opened them up. We will take more from it than the result itself. We got ourselves in enough good situations but that has been the story of the season for us.”
Blackburn Rovers 2-2 Coventry City
Sam Allardyce: “I have got no problems with the result. I just have a bit of a problem that we cannot see teams off when we have an opportunity. We have started to ship too many goals at Ewood and that is becoming an Achilles heel.”
Chris Coleman: “To be 2-1 up with only a couple of minutes to go, it feels like a defeat. But we have managed to take them back to our place, which is something.”
Roberto Martinez: “We created the better chances, we were very disappointed with the goal that we conceded, so overall I’m proud of the players. Today was a big test playing against a Premier League side. The goal came at the wrong time but the reaction we had, we controlled things, we created good chances.”
Roy Hodgson: “We certainly weren’t at our best. I thought it was a jaded performance from our side. All credit to Swansea, I thought their performance was excellent. Their high energy passing and movement was very good and we really had to dig in very deeply and rely heavily on our defensive organisation to keep our heads afloat.”
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