Manuel Pellegrini made nine changes from the side that lost to Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League last weekend, including five academy players.
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Striker David Faupala marked his maiden City appearance by cancelling out Diego Costa’s first-half opener, but Fabregas was giving his youthful opponents a footballing lesson and Chelsea’s experience and class told after half-time.
Chelsea will issue stadium bans and support police action if it can identify the supporters who threw coins at Manchester City players, as the FA Cup was marred by such incidents for the second day in a row. Yeah, we condemn it and I condemn it strongly and I think Chelsea will react. If I have 20 players then maybe I can, but if I have just 13 players I cannot take the risk to not recover the players who have a long flight on Monday or have one more player more injured.
City are desperate to end this campaign with some silverware and dropped former stopper Costel Pantilimon for the shock 2013 FA Cup final defeat to Wigan Athletic, having previously played in every round.
The Blues thrashed Manchester City 5-1 in the fifth round of the Cup on Sunday to set up a quarter-final with Everton – a repeat of the 2009 final which Chelsea won under Hiddink.
Pellegrini said: “I don’t think I need to make a defence of my team selection”. Winning the FA Cup is lovely worldwide. Both teams finished with 10 men after Blackburn’s Chris Taylor was shown a second yellow card and West Ham’s Cheikhou Kouyate saw straight red for a foul as the last man back.
It’s hard to say, “hey, I want to rest you”, then I get an eyebrow raised, “I don’t want to be rested”.
“Unfortunately for us, in five minutes we threw away all the good work we’d done”.
City had lobbied the Football Association and the BBC, who screened this game, to stage this tie on Friday or Saturday, enabling them time to prepare for the Kiev fixture, but after failing to win that battle, Pellegrini claimed he had no option but to field the youngsters. “We must be careful not to devalue it”, the 69-year-old Dutchman further added.
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Guus Hiddink’s Chelsea will face Everton while Arsenal and Manchester United have home FA Cup sixth-round ties in prospect.
