Hudson-Odoi hits rewind in real style

CHELSEA dipped 50 years into history with their kit and Callum Hudson-Odoi turned back a little time himself. His performance, a year to the day after he caught our attention against the same opposition, was an uplifting echo of a far happier period. It was a charming rewind, to before he ruptured his Achilles and before all that business with his transfer request. Those traumas ran into each other in the middle of 2019 and he has never quite rediscovered the trajectory he touched when Chelsea beat Forest at this stage of last season’s FA Cup. So maybe Forest can be the 19-year-old’s springboard for a second time after a fine contribution in which he scored one, played a key role in the second and supplied the heartbeat to a tie that was dead upon arrival. That is no slur on the Forest players who were given a game — they turned up, they tried, they fought. But it was in the honesty of their manager, Sabri Lamouchi, that we were reminded once again how little this competition can mean when set against bigger goals. For Forest, that translates to the far bigger aim of returning to the top tier for the first time since 1999. Sitting fourth in the Championship, they have a shot at it, and that, as Lamouchi explained after making ten changes to his side, is all that matters. ‘We do not have chances to win the FA Cup and we want the league,’ he said. ‘The fans, the club, the community, do not want to win the cup — they want to be back in the Premier League.’ Chelsea, for their part, appear to be going for it. Frank Lampard made nine changes to his side, but weak? With folk like Jorginho, Pedro and Mateo Kovacic, that would be over-stating it. They went with a very reasonable team in a kit designed in homage to their cup winners of 50 years ago and they breezed through to the fourth round. Reece James and Fikayo Tomori did well, as did Ross Barkley who scored the second, but it was HudsonOdoi who stood out. ‘It has been an interesting 12 months for him and you have to take his age into account,’ reflected Lampard. ‘The challenge now is sustaining the improvement we’ve seen.’