1 year ago
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13 min: Diallo falls over in the Fulham box and makes a half-hearted claim for a penalty kick. There was little or no contact, and the referee shows no interest. The home fans don’t really push the point too much either.
11 min: Ah, but they’re soon up as one to applaud the memory of Sunderland supporter Chris Collier, a retired Parachute Regiment captain and admin for a fans’ forum who recently passed. A touching moment.
10 min: That’s taken a bit of the air out of the Stadium of Light. The home fans roar defiantly for a few seconds, but soon drop their energy again.
GOAL! Sunderland 0-1 Fulham (Wilson 8)
Tete swings a cross in from the right. Ballard heads the ball straight up in the air. Vinicius makes a nuisance of himself and tees up Wilson on the penalty spot. Wilson steers a shot towards the bottom right. Patterson should tip around the post, but his hand is weak, and the ball squirts into the corner. Fulham lead!
8 min: A free kick for Fulham out on the right. The ball’s rolled to the flank for Wilson, who tees up Cairney infield. Cairney has a whack but Ballard charges him down. Blocked and cleared. However, Fulham come again, and …
6 min: Duffy pearls a glorious long pass down the inside-left channel for Solomon, who attempts to shoot from a tight angle but is forced to settle for a corner. It leads to nothing. What a pass from deep, though!
5 min: Kurzawa, Solomon and Vinicius combine well as Fulham shift the ball in from the left flank. Vinicius shapes to shoot but is closed down before he can let fly.
3 min: Clarke runs with purpose down the left before shuttling the ball over towards Diallo on the other flank. Diallo runs down a cul-de-sac and the impetus is gone.
2 min: Roberts is soon up again. No lounging around on the turf. It’s very cold tonight.
Fulham get the ball rolling. The game’s soon stopped as Roberts takes an accidental whack in the mush, courtesy of Kurzawa.
The teams are out! A freezing night on Wearside. Sunderland wear their red and white stripes, while Fulham sport their first-choice white. A fine FA Cup atmosphere at the Stadium of Light, but also plenty of pre-match nerves. “Much as I love Marco Silva I can’t understand why he is playing Palhinha tonight, rather than giving Lukic an introduction to English football,” writes Richard Hirst. “Palhinha is a fantastic tackler but his preferred technique of sliding in from 30 yards away to win the ball is great to watch but is only a millisecond’s mistiming away from a yellow card or worse. We need him for the Premier League rather than the luxury of the Cup.” We’ll be off in a second or three.
Marco Silva – who will be watching from the stands tonight after picking up a fourth yellow card of the season at Chelsea last Friday – talks to the Beeb. “It will be different and strange [to watch from the stand] … everything will be the same until kick-off and half-time will be the same as well, I will be with the players … our job is to prepare well … the feedback normally they receive from the bench they will receive as always … I will be in a different spot but with a better view to analyse!”
Tony Mowbray speaks to the BBC and is asked about the potential of a repeat of the 1973 FA Cup final in the next round. “I don’t think we’ll get dragged into the next round, let’s deal with this one … we had an amazing game at Fulham … we asked the team to challenge themselves against Premier League players … we asked them to express themselves and compete and that’s what we’re asking them to do tonight, to test their talent, drive and ambition … sometimes when you play against a top team there’s fear … but we’re going to try to play on the front foot like we did at Craven Cottage and hopefully it’ll make for another good game.”
Why do we put ourselves through it? This is why we put ourselves through it.
Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray makes one change to the starting XI sent out at Craven Cottage last week. Abdoullah Ba replaces the Achilles-stricken Ross Stewart.
Fulham coach Marco Silva makes two changes of his own from that match. Shane Duffy and Luke Harris replace Issa Diop and Andreas Pereira, who drop to the bench.
The teams
Sunderland: Patterson, Hume, Batth, Ballard, Alese, Neil, Michut, Roberts, Ba, Clarke, Amad.
Subs: Bass, O’Nien, Bennette, Pritchard, Rigg, Kelly, Ekwah, Johnson, Watson.
Fulham: Rodak, Tete, Tosin, Duffy, Kurzawa, Palhinha, Cairney, Harris, Wilson, Vinicius, Solomon.
Subs: Leno, Robinson, Diop, Reed, Pereira, James, Decordova-Reid, Willian, Mitrovic.
Preamble
A couple of weekends ago, this happened …
… and so to the Stadium of Light we go. The winners of this replay will host Leeds United in the fifth round, so a potential re-run of the 1973 final is a live possibility, fifty years down the line. Can Fulham nix that narrative? We’ll find out tonight, even if it takes extra time and penalties. Kick off is at 7.45pm GMT. It’s on!
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