London: A thrilling game with late goals saw Chelsea clinch a semifinal place in the FA Cup with a 4-2 defeat of Leicester. Chelsea fans had turned against their manager, Mauricio Pochettino, booing him and shouting “you don’t know what you are doing” after his substitutions and with Leicester having fought back into the game.
Pochettino said: “They need to trust me to manage in the way I think is best for the club. We need to respect their opinion as much as they need to respect mine. I am not here to do what people want. I am not stupid. I saw Mudryk (whom he substituted) and we analysed it and he was tired. He was doing some stretching and we thought he would not finish the game. We decided to go first for Mudryk, then for Stirling. We are professionals.”
Leicester were put under pressure early with Chelsea dominating the first half. They took the lead in the 13th minute. Nicolas Jackson beat Jannik Vestergaard on the right to cross for Marc Cucurella to tap in for his first goal for the club.
Raheem Stirling then won a penalty in the 25th minute when he was brought down by Abdul Fatawu and he decided to take the spot kick instead of Cole Palmer who has scored five out of five penalties that he has taken for the club. His poor shot was saved by the goalkeeper and then in the 41st minute he missed a chance when he shot wide with only the goalkeeper to beat.
Chelsea went two up in added time of the first half when Stirling somewhat made up for his earlier errors with providing an excellent pass to Palmer to score easily. Then from the relative comfort of two goals lead Chelsea let the opposition come back into the game.
Just six minutes after the break Axel Disasi was put under pressure by Patson Daka in a tussle for the ball and Disasi decided to ease the situation with a back pass to the goalkeeper. But from 35 yards his shot went into the Chelsea goal with Robert Sanchez well out of the goal and watching helplessly.
Leicester then achieved parity in the 62nd minute when Malo Gusto failed to stop Stephy Mavididi and he was able to curl a shot inside the far post for Leicester’s spirits to be lifted with that equaliser.
But in the 71st minute a penalty was awarded to Chelsea and a yellow card shown to Callum Doyle for his foul on Jackson. However, VAR showed the foul was inches outside the box and the decision was changed to a free-kick and a red card.
The game became livelier with Leicester’s fight-back but Chelsea grabbed the lead again in the second of the eight minutes of added time when substitute Carney Chukwuemeka scored from a neat back-heeled flick by Palmer and finally with virtually the last kick substitute Noni Madueke found the right top corner of the net.
Leicester manager, Enzo Maresca said: “We don’t like to lose but the effort and display was very good. The red card changed the dynamic of the game.”
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