Midway through the first half, with the snow swirling, the TV cameras showed six Chelsea substitutes huddled on the bench under big coats and cover ups. It was, in one simple shot, a perfect portrait of an English sporting winter.
Ultimately, that was where the discomfort started and finished for Liam Rosenior and his team. The Chelsea manager was afforded a warm welcome from fans of the club where he once worked and then watched his team ease in to round five of the FA Cup at half pace.
Hull – strangely under strength for a team without a fixture for eight days – were game for 40 minutes but gone from the race thereafter and that was disappointing for a full house that had come here on a dreadful night hoping to see further evidence that their upwardly mobile club were ready to make it out of the Championship this season.
Chelsea could even withstand two comical misses from forwards Estevao and Liam Delap in the first half before easing away on the back of a hat-trick from their Portuguese winger Pedro Neto.
Chelsea were largely superior from the start. The conditions may have been awful but initially the Premier League club only seemed to be affected whenever they reached the penalty area.
Hull had seen a couple of half chances come and go – a low cross from Lewis Koumas being cleared and a header from Cathal McCarthy flying over – before Chelsea missed those two opportunities in rather farcical fashion.
Pedro Neto bagged a hat-trick as Chelsea swept aside Hull 4-0 to reach the FA Cup fifth round
Estevao Willian also got on the scoresheet as Chelsea made light work of their in-form foes
Liam Rosenior was afforded a warm welcome on his return to Hull – despite the disastrous weather!
The 18-year-old Brazilian Estevao should have scored after applying a lovely touch to a through ball and rounding goalkeeper Dillon Phillips in the 17th minute. Somehow, he lifted the ball over the bar from seven yards.
Rosenior, sitting back on the bench, looked irritated by that one but something even more peculiar was to come. Delap was diligent in charging down a clearance from Phillips and watched the ball ricochet on to the bar and bounce down on to the goal line.
Replays showed that the ball was inches from being in but still Delap should have knocked in the rebound. For some reason, he chose to take a touch or two and by the time he had got the ball out of his feet Phillips had recovered to dive and block.
Both Estevao and Delap were to do rather better later in the game. Indeed Delap worked selflessly and ended the night with three assists. By half-time he had this first and from this point the game was set on to a path from which it was not to remotely deviate.
The key moment arrived five minutes before the break as Neto worked the ball neatly through a central area. When Delap laid it back to him 20 yards from goal, he wrapped his left foot around it to score the first of his three goals in the bottom corner.
That transpired to be the beginning of the end for Hull. They had been eager up until that moment but were pretty supine thereafter.
Chelsea’s second goal came five minutes into the second period and was soft. Phillips had done well to touch Andrey Santos’ header over but from Neto’s subsequent corner, the Hull defence turned to ice and the ball flew straight in through a crowd of bodies at the near post. Indeed replays showed it to have passed between Phillips’ legs.
There was to be no way back for the home team and by the time reinforcements arrived on the hour, they were three down.
This one was a well-made goal, Delap breaking down the right, leaving John Egan for dead and laying the ball off for Estevao to score from ten yards. Delap was influential once again with just under 20 minutes left and his night certainly got better the longer it went on. This time, he released the ball with his back to goal in the penalty area and Neto stepped up to score low with his right foot.
There was a late flurry from Hull. Koumas ran clear and struck a post. That briefly had the crowd on its feet. The people of Hull were still engaged even if their team were well beaten.
