West Auckland manager Gary Forrest says that he will let opponents Plymouth Parkway do the worrying when the two sides meet for a place in the last eight of the Buildbase FA Vase today.
West, not surprisingly, set off Friday morning at 10am on a 380 mile trip to Devon, hoping to arrive at their hotel by 6pm, and then prepare for the latest hurdle in their quest to reach Wembley for a third time.
“We’ve watched Plymouth in action twice,” he said. “Our assistant manager, Brian Atkinson, went to watch them last Saturday, and the weekend before, one of our players, Marc Ellison, saw them play. We’ve also got a couple of reports on them. Both the reports are saying similar things.
“It’s hard to gauge how good they are, because we don’t know how strong the teams are in that league. We know their shape, and we know a little about their players.
“We’ve got a good unbeaten run behind us – we haven’t lost since Stockton fifteen games ago – and we’ve only lost twice in our last 29. We know that Plymouth have watched us three times, and hopefully they’ve gone away thinking that we’ll be a tough team to beat. We’re not conceding many goals, we’ve only let in two goals in our last seven games.
“I’d prefer to let them worry about us, instead of us worrying about them. We’ll probably set ourselves up the same with maybe one or two tweaks.”
Forrest only has one doubt – midfielder Adam Mitchell has a bug and a decision will be made about him this morning.
Plymouth are currently second in the Toolstation Western League, having lost just two of their 20 league games this season.
In the other Vase ties, Consett are involved in another long-distance tie, at home to Deal from Kent.
Hebburn have made the trip over to Longridge, who have already beaten three Northern League clubs in the competition so far.
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