Man United, Bournemouth advance to FA Cup QF

Manchester United are into the FA Cup quarter-finals for a seventh straight season. Bournemouth got there for only the second time in their 122-year history.

Scott McTominay’s 97th-minute strike earned United a 1-0 win over West Ham in a lacklustre fifth-round match that required extra time at snowy Old Trafford yesterday.

In another demonstration of his growing assuredness in front of goal, the midfielder steered a volley into the bottom corner after a neat lay-off by Marcus Rashford at the end of a counterattack. The 24-year-old McTominay scored the winner against Watford in the third round, and also netted in his last two Premier League games.

“Scott has really developed that part of his game this season,” United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said. “We let him go into the box more often, unleash him. He’s a very good striker of the ball, very clinical.

“He was a forward in his younger days and you can see the authority when he gets a chance to finish.”

United, a 12-time winner of the FA Cup, are accustomed to going deep in cup competitions under Solskjaer over the past year but the semi-finals have been the ceiling, with the team losing in the last four in the League Cup (twice), the FA Cup and the Europa League.

BEST CHANCE

Along with the Europa League, the FA Cup looks to be United’s best chance of collecting their first piece of silverware since 2017 after falling five points behind Manchester City in the Premier League title race. City also have a game in hand.

West Ham, led by former Man United manager David Moyes, frustrated Solskjaer’s side with a disciplined defensive performance but weren’t helped by losing three players – Angelo Ogbonna (ankle), his replacement Issa Diop (head), and Andriy Yarmolenko (knee) – to injury by the 54th minute. The team was already without its only senior striker, Michail Antonio, whose minutes were being managed by Moyes after a recent injury.

Second-division Bournemouth beat Burnley 2-0 and are in quarter-finals of the world’s oldest club knockout competition for the first time since the 1956-57 season.

Goals by Sam Surridge and Junior Stanislas, from the penalty spot, saw off a depleted Burnley side at Turf Moor.

Burnley were looking to advance to the quarter-finals for the first time since the 2002-03 season, but manager Sean Dyche chose to rest his key players — including the entire first-choice defence and goalkeeper Nick Pope — with his team battling to avoid relegation in the Premier League.

AP