Manchester City’s FA Cup hero Antoine Semenyo wants to strip emotion away from Tuesday’s return to Bournemouth and revealed that his former team-mates plan to rough up their ex-talisman.
Semenyo goes back to the Vitality Stadium for the first time with City, who are desperate for victory in their quest to pip Arsenal to the Premier League title.
The January signing’s impish flick downed Chelsea at Wembley on Saturday, already his second piece of silverware since securing a £65million move.
It completes an astonishing eight-year journey from playing in the National League South with Bath City to settling matches on the biggest stage. Semenyo now has 10 goals in 25 appearances in his first four months at the Etihad Stadium.
‘It won’t be weird going back,’ said the 26-year-old. ‘It’ll be good to see everyone again. And obviously, it’s going to be a tough game.
‘I still speak to them every day. To be honest, they’ve been giving me a lot of crap, just like they’re going to kick me and this and that but it’ll be good to see them all.’
Antoine Semenyo now has 10 goals in 25 appearances in his first four months at the Etihad Stadium
The attacker had already racked up 10 goals in 21 matches for Bournemouth this season before his switch to Manchester City
Bournemouth are unbeaten in the league since Semenyo’s penultimate game for the club in early January, a run stretching 15 matches as they still battle for a spot in next season’s Champions League.
‘I was the problem!’ the winger added. ‘Tuesday is obviously very important. We just have to go down there and win.
‘Being at City has been surreal. Everything’s just happened so quickly. When you come to the team in January, you have to adapt as quick as you can.
‘When you have top pros who have won it all essentially, you just learn a lot and it rubs off on you a little bit. We just have to focus on what we’re doing and see what happens by the end of next week.
‘It’s still tiring on the body for sure but again we do everything we can to make sure that we recover well and do everything that we need to do when we’re back to prepare right. We’ll be ready for sure.’
