The defender gave a man of the match performance to secure his side a clean sheet against the expensively assembled City strikeforce, and his efforts were rewarded as team-mates Patrick Bamford and the Kike struck second-half goals to see the Championship side dump the Premier League champions out of the competition.
Man City 0-2 Middlesbrough
FA Cup
Fourth Round
Etihad Stadium
Saturday 24 January 2015
Winners receive £90,000
“I had a lot of friends and family in the away end, and I was just speechless when Kike put it in,” Gibson told TheFA.com afterwards. “I didn’t know what to do, where to run – I just couldn’t believe it.”
“To come here you want to give a good account of yourself, that was the aim and to stay in the game as long as possible.
“To win 2-0, keep a clean sheet and defeat the champions is unbelievable.”
The England Under-21 centre-half has been instrumental in Boro climbing to second in the league table, but he says the challenge of superstar striker Sergio Aguero was on a different level to anything he had faced previous – but it was one he came out on top of.
“I wanted Aguero to be playing because I want to challenge myself against the best. If you don’t try it then you’ll never know, so I was glad when he was starting,” said Gibson.
“It was a good opportunity for me to test my wits against one of the best strikers in the world, and luckily for me I kept him quiet.”
As expected, the visitors were under the cosh a little in the first half, and it was Gibson and his defensive partner Daniel Ayala, plus some fantastic saves from goalkeeper Tomas Mejias that kept the scoreline goalless at the break.
Gibson said: “They had a real good spell in the first half, and it was real hard work. You know that one bit of sloppiness will be punished or if you stick a leg out then they’ll go down for a penalty, so you need to remain focussed.
“We did our best and saw it out, and it was the same after we took the lead. We felt another wave of pressure, but we said, ‘If we can see these ten minutes out, then we’ll be ok’, and we did that with hard work and determination.”
He added: “When you get the opportunities against teams like these you have to take them, but we didn’t quite do that and we had a few to add to our lead.
“But we got the all-important second one and the relief on everyone’s faces was a picture to see at full-time.”
And asked who he wants next, Gibson simply replied: “We want another big club.”
