United travel to Hampshire on Friday to take on an Aldershot in the Emirates FA Cup 4th round qualifying on Saturday. The magic of the FA Cup starts here for National League teams…
Ruairi Keating will be experiencing his first FA Cup tie ever.
“I am looking forward to it – it is exciting!” says Ruairi.
“To play in the FA Cup for the first time is nice, I’m looking forward to it. We’ve worked hard all week now so let’s go and win. It would be nice to go on a run so let’s see what happens.
“The performance we put in against Maidenhead is what the fans should expect from us. We showed the type of quality we have in the squad, that is the type of players we have here. Let’s play like that every week.”
“Aldershot are a good footballing side, they are known for it. It will be a nice atmosphere and the pitch will be good. It is exactly where you want to be, especially for an FA Cup tie.”
Luke Young is looking to show that the team is improving, whether that is in the National League, or the Cup.
“Whether it is a Cup game or not, you still have to go into the game with the right mentality,” says Luke.
“They’re [Aldershot] a good side and they’re going to play football. At times they overplay and you have to exploit their weaknesses. We have to exploit that and go there full of confidence and play our game.
“We’re going into the game wanting to win it and wanting to progress.”
“They’re [Aldershot] excellent on the ball,” says club captain Josh Gowling.
“They’re very good at keeping possession so that is something we are going to work on. We need to be strong and resilient and that is what we have worked on in training today, we’ll do it again tomorrow and then we’ll take our game plan into Saturday.
“It is all about work-rate. We came off it against Dover. We need to be more organized on the pitch and the manager has given us that, and we didn’t do that against Dover. I don’t think we worked hard enough. He has told us that if we put that amount of work back in then performances will come.”
“They [Aldershot] like to get it down and play; it is going to be very different to last week,” says Rhys Murphy.
“Hopefully we will be able to play a bit more football ourselves. Everyone was frustrated with the performance we put in against Dover so we will be looking to put that right.”