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Amid freezing rain, snow, and a biting wind off the waters of the Humber Estuary, alongside a resolute Hull City side pushing hard for promotion, this presented all the ingredients of a challenging evening’s work for the visitors.

"We could have added to our tally but the opposition are a strong team and it was a difficult fixture; I am delighted with the performance," he said. "This club means a lot to me so it was great to get a positive welcome from the fans of fans. The application of the players was superb."

Liam Rosenior holds this city close to his heart, given part of his family are from Hull and his enjoyable period in management of the Championship club. This happy connection continued with a magnificent performance from his squad, who in the end sauntered into the fifth round of the famous old competition.

Clinical Edge Seals Comfortable Victory

Seventy-two hours removed from surrendering a 2-0 lead in the league, there was a sniff of vulnerability about Chelsea going into this potentially tricky tie. The packed Hull crowd evidently sensed it too, but Rosenior's men navigated the task perfectly.

The manager rang the changes, making seven of them to his starting lineup. The tie might and perhaps ought to have been decided earlier than it actually was, with both Estêvão Willian and Liam Delap at fault for missing glorious chances to put Chelsea ahead in the first half.

But, fortunately for the visitors, their Portuguese attacker was in a much more clinical frame of mind. He broke the scoring with a marvellous long-range effort, which proved to be the catalyst for Chelsea to assume command of the match. By the final whistle, they had 4 goals, with Neto scoring three of them for a brilliant hat-trick.

The Forward's Response and Influence

Hull showed plenty of fight all game, but the clearer opportunities always came to the visitors. Estêvão should have opened the scoring when he rounded keeper Dillon Phillips before inexplicably firing over. Delap then had a similar horror moment in front of goal against his former club.

He blocked a the goalkeeper's kick which came off the bar, and he started to run away thinking the ball had crossed the line. It hadn’t, and by the time he realised, Hull's backline had responded to clear the danger.

The player had his head in his hands after that moment, but he was hugely instrumental from there on out, registering 3 key passes. The first was for the opening goal as his pass teed up his teammate to finish from outside the box. Six minutes after the restart, it was 2-0 as the forward's corner went directly in under Phillips's legs.

Contest Sealed and Attention Turns

Soon after Neto’s second goal, the match was put beyond doubt as a dazzling dribble from Delap laid on Estêvão to slide into an unguarded goal. The hat-trick hero then completed his hat-trick as the provider once again played the decisive pass for the striker to coolly slot past a stranded goalkeeper.

By that stage, the effort Hull had done in the first half-hour had been forgotten. Their priority must now switch back to achieving a return to the Premier League under Sergej Jakirovic, who left out several first-choice individuals with that aim in mind.

"In my opinion we earned at least one goal but if we play like this we will be in a very good situation in the league," the Hull manager commented. "Keep fighting, maybe in the next matches this can be a good lesson of how we should play."

There was great endeavour to the end, and they almost got a late goal when a substitute hit a the upright in stoppage time. But this was Chelsea’s night, and another positive stride for their new head coach at a stadium he knows very well.

FA Cup Omens Are Promising

That made for an in the end straightforward evening’s performance, and the FA Cup-shaped omens are good from here for Chelsea. They have faced Hull on three other occasions in this competition in the past ten years and every single time, they have progressed to make the final. Much remains to be work in that regard, but this was another significant tick for the Chelsea boss.