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Amid sleet, flurries, and a swirling breeze from the banks of the Humber, alongside a resolute home side pushing hard for promotion, this presented all the ingredients of a difficult night's task for Chelsea.

"We might have scored more but Hull are a good team and it was a tough tie; I am very pleased with the performance," he said. "Hull City is very special to me so it was nice to get a positive reception from the fans of supporters. The attitude of the players was excellent."

The Chelsea manager has this city close to his heart, given some of his family hail from Hull and his enjoyable spell in management of the Tigers. This positive connection was extended with a magnificent performance from his team, who ultimately sauntered into the fifth round of the famous old competition.

Clinical Finishing Seals Comprehensive Win

Seventy-two hours removed from surrendering a 2-0 lead in the Premier League, there was a sniff of vulnerability about them going into this intriguing cup clash. The capacity home support clearly felt it too, but the London side handled the task perfectly.

Rosenior made alterations, enacting multiple of them to his XI. The match could and maybe should have been decided earlier than it eventually was, with two Estêvão Willian and Liam Delap guilty of missing excellent chances to put Chelsea in front in the first half.

But, luckily for the visitors, their Portuguese attacker was in a far more ruthless frame of mind. He broke the deadlock with a marvellous distance effort, which proved to be the spark for his team to assume command of proceedings. By the final whistle, they had 4 goals, with the forward netting three of them for a brilliant three-goal haul.

The Forward's Redemption and Influence

Hull showed great fight throughout, but the better opportunities consistently came to the visitors. The winger should have opened the deadlock when he rounded goalkeeper Dillon Phillips before inexplicably shooting over. The striker then had a similar horror moment in front of goal against his old team.

He blocked a the goalkeeper's clearance which came off the crossbar, and Delap started to celebrate believing the ball had gone over the line. It hadn’t, and by the time he realised, Hull's defenders had reacted to clear 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 first was for the opening goal as his through ball teed up his teammate to finish from range. Six minutes after the restart, it was two as the forward's corner went straight in under Phillips's legs.

Tie Sealed and Focus Turns

Soon after the second goal, the match was put beyond doubt as a magnificent dribble from Delap teed up Estêvão to slide into an empty net. Neto then finished his hat-trick as the provider again delivered the decisive ball for the striker to coolly convert by a helpless goalkeeper.

By that stage, the effort Hull had done in the opening thirty minutes had been erased. Their priority must now return to achieving a promotion to the Premier League under Sergej Jakirovic, who left out several key individuals with that goal in mind.

"In my opinion we deserved at least one goal but if we perform like this we will be in a strong situation in the league," he said. "Never surrender, maybe in the upcoming games this can be a positive lesson of how we should play."

There was great endeavour to the end, and they almost claimed a late goal when Lewis Koumas hit a the upright in injury time. But this was Chelsea’s evening, and another positive step forward for their recently-appointed manager at a place he knows intimately.

FA Cup Omens Are Promising

The result made for an in the end straightforward evening’s performance, and the cup competition omens are good from here for the winners. They have faced Hull on three previous occasions in this tournament in the last decade and every single time, they have gone on to reach the showpiece. There is remains to be work in that regard, but this was another huge tick for Rosenior.