Man City vs. Brighton
Venue: Wembley Stadium
Kick off: 5:30PM
Manchester City could take another significant step towards their quadruple hopes this afternoon when they take on Brighton & Hove Albion in the FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley.
Both clubs narrowly avoided upsets against second-tier opposition in the last round and now find themselves just 90 minutes away from the final of the world’s oldest cup competition.
The EFL Cup has already been won, the Premier League title remains in their hands and they have reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
Pep Guardiola’s “impossible dream” of the quadruple is edging ever closer with each passing week, and a 14th successive victory this afternoon would leave the English champions within touching distance of one more leg of it.
The City players will no doubt run out at Wembley with warnings from Guardiola ringing in their ears, though; the next eight days could wreck their hopes in all three remaining competitions if things go badly, with Tottenham Hotspur to come on Tuesday in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final and then a visit to Crystal Palace – who beat them at the Etihad earlier this season – in the Premier League next weekend.
City will go into all of those matches as favourites, particularly this weekend, but they only need to look at their own recent FA Cup history – yet alone the competition’s giant-killing reputation – for evidence that they cannot afford to take Brighton lightly.
The quadruple quest almost ended on a rainy evening in Wales last month when Championship side Swansea City stormed into a 2-0 lead in the quarter-finals, only for Man City to score three times in the final 21 minutes to turn things around – although the final two goals arguably would not have stood had VAR been in play.
The fifth-round defeat to League One Wigan Athletic last season will also serve as a reminder that there are no gimmes in this competition, although Guardiola has certainly taken it seriously this season as he bids to land the only domestic trophy that has eluded him in his illustrious managerial career so far.
The Swansea scare was a blip in an otherwise destructive run to the semi-finals which has seen Man City hammer Rotherham United, Burnley and Newport County, scoring a competition-high 19 goals en route to Wembley.
City have not scored 20 times in an FA Cup campaign since 1981, when incidentally they made it to the final – one of 10 occasions from 13 previous semis that they have reached the showpiece of this competition.
The most recent of those successes came back in 2013, though, and the last time they lifted the trophy was in 2011 – a surprisingly long wait considering how much of a force they have been in the intervening eight years.
The current crop are well placed to end that wait this year, though, and show no signs of slowing down on any front as they charge towards English football history.
Man City are not the only team for whom history beckons this season, and Brighton will go into today’s match with their eyes set on lifting the famous FA Cup trophy for the very first time.
Indeed, they have never won any major silverware before, so victory this year would surely rank as the greatest moment in the club’s 118-year history.
However, to do that they must traverse the mountain that is Man City, and Chris Hughton will be under no illusions of the size of the task that awaits his side this afternoon.
Man City possible XI: Ederson, Walker, Kompany, Otamendi, Danilo, D Silva, Gundogan, Foden, Bernardo, Jesus, Sterling.
Brighton possible XI: Ryan, Montoya, Duffy, Dunk, Bernardo, Propper, Stephens, Bissouma, Jahanbakhsh, Murray, Knockaert.
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