Bournemouth 1 Man City 2: Omar Marmoush keeps Pep Guardiola’s season alive with FIRST TOUCH in FA Cup quarter-final
PEP GUARDIOLA might be having a bit of a nightmare – but he was still able to wreck the nation’s hopes of a dream FA Cup semi-final line-up.
Pretty much everyone, apart from fans of Manchester City, wanted Bournemouth to join Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace and Aston Villa in the last four of the tournament.
But while Brazilian striker Evanilson put Bournemouth ahead Erling Haaland – having wasted three first half chances, including a penalty- scored the equaliser just after half-time.
And within a couple of minutes of replacing Haaland, Egyptian forward Omar Marmoush scored only his third goal since joining from Frankfurt for £59million in January.
So, while this is proving to be a lousy season by City’s ridiculously high standards, a seventh successive appearance in the FA Cup semi-finals is in the bag.
Let’s not forget that City’s semi-final opponents Forest are six points clear of them in the Premier League so they have every right to fancy their chances.
But as we saw here, Guardiola has the expertise – and a pretty decent subs bench – to change the game.
On a glorious day on the south coast, Guardiola saw that his team were struggling and brought on 20-year-old Nico O’Reilly at the break for centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov.
Although he was playing as a left-back, and has played there in the previous two FA Cup ties, O’Reilly is not really a left-back.
His favourite position is as an attacking midfielder and while he can play as a No 10, he has also filled in as a defensive midfielder.
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Yet here, O’Reilly helped change the game by assisting both goals and although he has only played a handful of first-team games, you would not have guessed it.
So, City scraped through but this is still proving to be a terrific year for the cups.
While Liverpool have all but won the Prem, the three promoted teams are going down and it looks as though two of the relegated club will be coming back up automatically, this term will be celebrated as a triumph over the so-called elite of English football if either Forest, Villa or Palace can follow Newcastle’s success in the Carabao Cup.
Bournemouth will be annoyed with themselves after putting themselves in such a good position but they were unable to match their highly-charged first half performance after the break.
They were missing suspended defenders Milos Kerkez and Dean Huijsen with left-back Julio Solar making only his second appearance in English football.
And they were creaking at the back early on as Haaland could have scored a hat-trick within the space of six minutes.
Although he steered Mattheus Nunes’ cross wide, you would have bet your life on him to stick away a penalty three minutes later after Tyler Adams handled.
It was not the greatest of penalties but Kepa still had to guess the right way and he flung himself to the left.
https://twitter.com/itvfootball/status/1906372469952319663For Haaland, it was his third miss from the penalty spot in six which followed a run of 11 successive spot-kicks.
Incredibly the match was only 16 minutes old when Haaland had another clear but after galloping clear, he lifted his shot over the bar.
So it was inevitable that Bournemouth would tear up the other end and score.
Nunes was to blame by giving possession away to Lewis Cook and then the City defender was caught out at the far post with Justin Kluivert beating him to David Brooks’ cross. While Kluivert thought he had scored, Evanilson made sure on the line under pressure from Khusanov
Marcos Senesi would have made it 2-0 had his leg been an inch longer but he was unable to prod Brooks’ free-kick over the line.
https://twitter.com/itvfootball/status/1906385563185258561At half-time, Guardiola unleashed O’Reilly and the England under-20 international clearly carried out his manager’s orders to perfection.
Within four minutes, O’Reilly made his mark as he punished Bournemouth for pushing up too far.
His cross was outstanding and while Haaland was not having a good day, he was never going to miss this one.
Guardiola celebrated widely but was then booked by sarcastically clapping Stuart Attwell who, quite rightly, did not stop play because Haaland had fallen awkwardly.
Yet Haaland was immediately replaced by Marmoush and within a couple of minutes, he scored the second.
Again it was O’Reilly who delivered the assist, capitalising on a slip by Antoine Semenyo although Marmoush’s shot went through Kepa.
So, although the FA Cup is going to have one of the so-called big boys in the semi-finals, three out of four unfancied teams is not bad.