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For those who like to think the FA Cup is about more than just monitoring the load on Premier League legs, one of the first ties of the fourth round looks a decent prospect. Two teams in good form, two teams with ambitions, two teams with distinctly contrasting styles, all under the floodlights on a Friday night. And for those who find the Cup an unnecessary distraction from more glamorous competitions then, yes, Northampton v Derby County will likely feature Wayne Rooney too.
“It’s going to be quite special sharing a pitch with Rooney,” says Jordan Turnbull, the Northampton centre-half. A mainstay of Keith Curle’s team this season, with five league goals, the former Southampton youth product has been integral to the Cobblers’ League Two promotion push. He also happens to be a Manchester United fan.
“Of course he’s a hero for me and growing up I was always watching him,” the 25-year-old says. “The amount of goals he scored was just brilliant, but I think what everyone liked about him – especially United fans – was his aggression on the pitch. Of course he went over the top sometimes but you get that with football players and you enjoy watching it.”
Turnbull admires Rooney still as a player, but before the match he has also assessed his former hero more dispassionately. “He’s not going to be that same threat up front with Derby; I think he’s had to adapt his game to a sort of sitting position in central midfield. He’s able to do that because the quality he possesses is out of this world,” he says. “It’s another threat we have to take on board and really counteract. But during the 90 minutes, he’s just another player.”
Unbeaten in their past five league matches, Northampton are sixth in League Two, two points off an automatic promotion place. They also comprehensively outplayed League One Burton Albion in the third round of the Cup, romping through 4-2 away from home in a display of clinical finishing.
“It was brilliant,” Turnbull says of that result. “We took around 1,500 fans there and they were fantastic. To put in a performance like that against a team in a higher division was a way of repaying them. We’re definitely capable of pulling a result out of the bag against Derby too. We know it’s going to be a tough ask. We need to be at the best of our game and be ruthless but we’ve definitely got a chance. A little Cup upset would be brilliant.”
There wasn’t a big “FA Cup payday” for Northampton in beating Burton, and the Pirelli Stadium was no glamorous away day for the supporters either. But they still travelled en masse and the atmosphere (and result) was still one everyone at the club will remember. Which is one reason why Turnbull is not inclined to go along with the argument which says (in rough precis) that the Cup should be reconfigured to best suit the recuperative needs of the Premier League’s Big Six.
“From the point of view of teams in the lower divisions it’s a great occasion every round,” Turnbull says. “For teams in the higher divisions they might not see it like that, but every round we’ve had brilliant support wherever we’ve been playing. Now we’ve got a big Cup tie against Derby at home where we can have the same again.
“I think the hunger from players to play in the FA Cup is definitely still there and it’s still a fantastic competition, especially when you get into the latter stages. It’s brilliant. To talk about getting rid of replays … I think it would be terrible for lower-league teams if that was to happen. You’re talking about ticket sales, a full stadium, a brilliant occasion. You’ve got to look at it from the perspective of teams in lower divisions.”
It’s not just the attitude towards the Cup that’s different in lower divisions. The style of play that has brought Northampton recent success is not quite the same as that Phillip Cocu is trying to instill in his Derby team. Curle described his tactics against Burton in the following terms: “Plan A was to get the ball into [striker] Vadaine Oliver, upset them aerially and get runners off him. Plan B was for more of the same.”
Derby’s slick passers would therefore be well advised to take care on long throws, free-kicks and corners when the lights go up at Sixfields. “We take our time and we work on those quite a lot the day before a game,” Turnbull says. “We’re repetitive with it. It’s come to fruition a lot recently. We score a lot of goals from set pieces, and we want to keep on doing that.”
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