Chelsea earned their place in the FA Cup fifth round after edging Queens Park Rangers 1-0 at a tense Loftus Road on Saturday.
A penalty from Juan Mata, which QPR believed to be hugely harshly-awarded, counted for the only goal of a game that failed to match the lively Premier League encounter between the sides in October.
Much non-football-related talk before the game surrounded on whether or not QPR’s Anton Ferdinand would shake the hand of John Terry in their first meeting since the latter was charged with racially abusing the former in the league game earlier this season. In the end, the FA gave permission to scrap the pre-match handshakes so the issue was avoided. Terry will be at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday, where he is expected to defend himself against the charge.
Once the game got going a vocal home support showered Terry with boos in a first half that passed without too much incident of a high-quality footballing nature. Daniel Sturridge struck wildly off target from 12 yards for the visitors, before Mata drew a parry from Paddy Kenny.
However, such chances as Mata’s were the exception rather than the norm as QPR’s first effort was weakly volleyed wide by captain Joey Barton.
The longer the half went on the slightly better it would get, with Chelsea’s Raul Meireles teeing himself up to volley over Kenny’s bar from 25 yards and Mata showing great skill to set up Ramires to blast over.
However, the interval came with the teams deadlocked, a situation that urged home manager Hughes to replace Heidar Helguson with on-loan Manchester United forward Federico Macheda. It was, however, the Blues who came back out more on the front foot.
Sturridge saw a shot blocked before also clearing Kenny’s bar on the back of a move that saw Fernando Torres weave his way past several QPR men.
David Luiz then blasted wide from all of 40 yards before a QPR opportunity saw Shaun Wright-Phillips test Petr Cech with a fierce shot. Jamie Mackie ran on to the loose ball but was unable to finish past Chelsea’s Czech stopper.
And his side were punished straight away as Clint Hill and Sturridge came together to meet a Chelsea cross from the left. Referee Mike Dean decided that the QPR man had committed a foul and created uproar as he chose to award a penalty, which Mata slotted home while sending Kenny the wrong way.
QPR still had the best part of half an hour to get back into it but were kept at bay for the majority as Chelsea were more bothered by a nasty-looking injury to Ramires, who fell awkwardly in a challenge with Tommy Smith.
That led to seven minutes of injury-time, all of which had elapsed before a fierce last gasp drive from Luke Young brought Cech’s first real test of the day. The follow-up play led to Wright-Phillips shooting too high and that was that, as Rangers’ first foray into the fourth round for 11 years came to nothing.