PREVIEWS FROM ALL OF TODAY’S FA CUP TIES
FROM THE brink of liquidation to the biggest game in the club’s history. Chichester City won’t forget these past 18 months in a hurry!
This afternoon they visit Prenton Park to take on League One side Tranmere Rovers, who sit five divisions and 104 places above them in the football pyramid.
Not since Mossley 70 years ago has a club reached this stage having started in the extra preliminary round way back in early August.
This journey alone has been one to last a lifetime but in the context of the club’s recent history, it is remarkable how far they’ve come.
Manager Miles Rutherford recalls turning up for training at the club one evening and finding a notice on the door saying they weren’t allowed in due to unpaid bills. Just last season they were playing Step 5 football.
When your club has been close to not existing, the fear of being an underdog in a cup
game doesn’t come close.
“You can’t go there and worry too much, we’ve got to go and believe we can cause a shock,” boss Rutherford told The NLP. “We don’t really know what the gulf is going to be like between the two. We’re going into it just hoping we can show a good account of ourselves.
Preparation
“The FA Cup has taken everything over and you know once you’re out you’ve got to build everyone back up again. The players are looking just at Sunday, the club has to look beyond and going forward. If we got a result I think it would be one of the biggest shocks in FA Cup history.”
After dramatically receiving a bye into the second round, Chichester have been made to wait for their date with destiny.
Their preparation in the week was somewhat scuppered by the weather, forced to find an alternate training facility so to not ruin their home pitch.
Yesterday, they stopped off at
St George’s Park to loosen their legs at England’s pristine training base for one final session to cement their plan to stop Tranmere.
Uphill task
“Obviously there are lots of things different to our normal preparation but we don’t want to change too much. We want to keep it as real as we can,” said Rutherford, who admits having to pick his team for the tie has been the hardest and “worst part” of the experience.
“We know we’re probably not going to have as much of the ball as we’d like, really the biggest thing is everyone putting in maximum effort. We’ll try and move Tranmere around in places they don’t want to go but we know it’s going to be an uphill task.
“What I hope is that some of them don’t freeze, which is our biggest worry.
“We’ve watched some of the Tranmere games. They’re a good side, a professional outfit. They know exactly what they’re doing and so they should. I would have thought they know exactly what we’re about. I should think they’re looking forward to playing Chichester like anyone else would have been.”
And if they did pull off the unthinkable…
“I don’t think you’d see me or anyone from Chichester for a month! We’d still be in Tranmere, that’s how much it would mean to us. We’ve got to go there and
do our best.”