Phil Foden bagged a brace as Manchester City eased into the FA Cup quarter-finals with a comfortable 3-0 win against Bristol City at Ashton Gate on Tuesday evening.
Due to Foden’s brace and Kevin De Bruyne’s late goal, Pep Guardiola’s team was never in danger of upsetting a bigger team in the fifth round match at Ashton Gate.
Guardiola praised the impact of England forward Foden, who is starting to get back to his best form after a season where his play was all over the place.
“His career was always up, up, up. This season he struggled a bit and was a bit down. But now he’s back for the best bit of the season,” Guardiola said.
“His impact has been amazing. Football pays off when you work like he does.”
City will hope to get another boost on Wednesday, when Premier League leaders Arsenal play Everton in their game in hand. Arsenal are two points ahead of City, who are the champions.
“We’re still alive in three competitions. We’ll see what happens in the future,” Guardiola said.
Riyad Mahrez crossed the ball to the far post, where Foden shot it into the top of the net. This gave City the lead in the seventh minute.
Foden gave City a two-goal lead after 74 minutes. Julian Alvarez flicked the ball to Foden, and Foden beat Max O’Leary with another good finish.
In the 81st minute, De Bruyne scored the third goal for the visitors from a long way away. This made sure that the six-time FA Cup winners had the smoothest of nights.
Leicester was booed off the field after Blackburn stopped them from making it to the FA Cup final for the second time in three years.
Brendan Rodgers led Leicester to its first-ever FA Cup win in 2021, but Rovers took advantage of the Premier League team’s terrible defense to end their hopes of making a similar run.
Leicester is 14th in the Premier League, just three points above the relegation zone. Rodgers made six changes to the team that lost to Arsenal last weekend and paid the price for his gamble.
“If there’s anyone to blame it’s me. I made the changes and sadly it didn’t work,” Rodgers said.
“We brought four players into the starting line up who won the FA Cup a couple of seasons ago. But they were better than us and we have to worry about that.”
Rovers got the lead when Tyrhys Dolan curled a shot in from the edge of the area in the 33rd minute. This was the first time since 2015 that Rovers had made it to the last eight.
Sam Gallagher set up Sammie Szmodics to make it 2-0 seven minutes after halftime.
In the 67th minute, Harvey Barnes passed the ball to Kelechi Iheanacho, who scored. However, Blackburn held on to win.
Photo by EPA/Vince Mignott
