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Amid freezing rain, snow, and a swirling breeze from the banks of the Humber Estuary, combined with a resolute home side pushing hard for promotion, this presented all the makings of a challenging evening’s work for Chelsea.

"We could have scored more but the opposition are a strong team and it was a difficult tie; I’m delighted with the performance," he said. "This club means a lot to me so it was nice to get a positive welcome from the fans of fans. The application of the players was excellent."

The Chelsea manager has this city close to his heart, considering part of his relatives are from Hull and his enjoyable spell in charge of the Tigers. His positive association was extended with a commanding performance from his team, who in the end sauntered into the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Clinical Edge Secures Comprehensive Win

Three days removed from letting slip a two-goal advantage in the Premier League, there was a hint of fragility about them going into this intriguing tie. The packed Hull support evidently sensed it too, but the London side navigated the task perfectly.

The manager made alterations, making multiple of them to his XI. The tie could and perhaps ought to have been decided long before it actually was, with both the Brazilian winger and the forward guilty of missing excellent chances to put their side in front in the first half.

But, luckily for the away team, their Portuguese attacker was in a much more clinical frame of mind. He opened the deadlock with a marvellous distance strike, which proved to be the spark for his team to take control of proceedings. By full time, they had 4 goals, with the forward netting a trio of them for a superb hat-trick.

The Forward's Redemption and Impact

The home side showed great fight all game, but the better chances always fell to the visitors. Estêvão ought to have opened the scoring when he went past keeper Dillon Phillips before inexplicably shooting over. Delap then had a similar nightmare incident in front of goal against his former club.

He deflected a the goalkeeper's kick which came back from the bar, and he began to celebrate thinking the ball had crossed the line. It hadn’t, and by the time he understood, Hull's defenders had reacted to avert the danger.

Delap had his head in his hands after that moment, but he was immensely instrumental from there on out, providing three key passes. The opening was for the opening goal as his pass teed up his teammate to score from range. Six minutes after the second half began, it was 2-0 as the forward's set-piece went straight in through the keeper's legs.

Tie Sealed and Attention Turns

Soon after Neto’s second goal, the tie was put beyond doubt as a dazzling run from Delap teed up his teammate to slide into an empty net. Neto then completed his hat-trick as the provider once again played the decisive ball for the striker to coolly slot by a stranded Phillips.

At that point, the work Hull had done in the opening half-hour had been erased. Their priority must now switch back to securing a promotion to the top division under their manager, who left out a number of key individuals with that goal in mind.

"In my opinion we deserved at least one goal but if we play like this we will be in a very good situation in the Championship," he said. "Keep fighting, maybe in the upcoming games this can be a good lesson of how we should play."

Hull showed great effort to the end, and they nearly got a late goal when Lewis Koumas hit a the upright in stoppage time. But this was Chelsea’s night, and another encouraging step forward for their new head coach at a place he knows intimately.

FA Cup Omens Are Promising

That resulted in an in the end routine evening’s performance, and the FA Cup-shaped omens are good from here for the winners. They have played Hull on three previous times in this competition in the past ten years and on each occasion, they have gone on to reach the final. Much remains to be done in that respect, but this was another significant tick for the Chelsea boss.