Tony Matthews football round-up

In the FA Cup 5^th round:-

• Arsenal earned a degree of revenge for that heavy 5-1 PL defeat by beating Liverpool 2-1
• Manchester City stunned Chelsea 2-0
• Sunderland ousted Southampton 1-0 (with just 16,000 present)
• Holders Wigan won 2-1 at Cardiff
• Everton eliminated Swansea 3-1
• Sheffield United k’od Nottingham Forest, also 3-1
• Brighton drew 1-1 with Hull

The quarter-finals, on 6/7 March, are Arsenal-Everton, Manchester City-Wigan (a repeat of last year’s final), Brighton/Hull-Sunderland and a Sheffield derby, United-Wednesday IF the Owls beat Charlton! The Blades (FL1) are the lowest-ranked team left in the competition.

The Barcelona-Real Madrid Copa del Rey final will take place at Valencia on 19 April

After 74 days and 17 games in charge, Fulham have sacked manager Rene Meulensteen. Former Bayern Munich coach Felix McGath takes over – the 14^th boss at Craven Cottage in 20 years.  

Wayne Rooney is set to stay at Manchester United until May 2019. He’ll earn £300,000-a-week and bank around £70m over the next five-and-a-half years.

Last Saturday, Lionel Messi scored his 336^th and 337^th goals for leaders Barcelona in a 6-0 win over Rayo Vallecano. This breaks the record for most goals scored for a Spanish club, which was held by Bilbao’s Telmo Zarra who netted 335 between 1940 and 1956. Real Madrid are second in La Liga after beating Getafe 3-0. Almeria lost 1-0 to Levante.

If Celtic’s Fraser Forster keeps his goal in tact for the first half-hour of Saturday’s game at Hearts, he will break a 43-year old record set by Aberdeen’s Bobby Clark in 1971 of not conceding a goal in top-flight Scottish football for 1,115 minutes.

Ex-Gloucestershire cricketer John Mortimer has died aged 71.

Northampton (55 pts), Saracens (54) and Bath (44) are 1-2-3 in Rugby’s Aviva League.