MANAGER PREVIEW: Grainger relishing Radcliffe challenge

First-team manager Danny Grainger is looking forward to tomorrow night’s trip to Radcliffe in the Emirates FA Cup.

Reds will be looking to get back to winning ways after a 2-2 draw in their opening NPL North West Division game at Pickering Town on Saturday.

Ahead of the First Round Qualifying tie, Grainger is relishing getting back to business in Greater Manchester.

Speaking to BBC Radio Cumbria post-match, he said: “It will be a test but it’s good we go there with no pressure.

“They’re the team in the higher division, they should be the ones who are going to have to take the game to us which probably will suit us.

“Obviously, it suits teams at the moment who sit behind the ball and wait for us to make a mistake.

“That’s obviously what happened today, slow start, but we have to stand up to these challenges.

“We’re not the surprise package anymore, we’re the team everyone knows they’re going to raise their game to play against.”

We were without goalkeeper Jim Atkinson in Yorkshire due to illness, meaning the boss had to bring in Carlisle United youth goalkeeper Isaac Robinson to play his first-ever senior 90 minutes.

Robinson was given a tough test but showed confidence throughout and Grainger updated us on the situation.

“We’ll probably have Jim back,” he revealed.

“He was touch and go today but it was a sickness bug he had, and we don’t want it spreading through the team when we’ve got five weeks of Saturday-Tuesdays.

“We’ve got to be careful.”

“I thought Isaac came in and did really well for a lad who’s making his first appearance.”

Finally, after Dav Symington returned from his ankle injury at the interval on Saturday, the gaffer gave us the latest of our two outfield absentees.

“No problems from today but Robbie Hebson’s obviously going to be out for a couple of weeks, at least until we find out his scan results.

“Jordan [Little] will be a couple of weeks as well. It was great to obviously have Dav back on the pitch.

“We’re looking forward to getting back into the throw of things on Tuesday.”

Kick-off tomorrow evening is at 7:45pm and tickets are available here.

We hope to see you there!

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.
Don`t copy text!