John Coleman says Accrington Stanley believe they can spring an upset when they host Leeds United in the FA Cup fourth round on Saturday.
Stanley, who have never made it past round four, are currently 20th in League One as they prepare to face a Leeds outfit who are 15th in the Premier League.
Both teams came through third-round replays, Accrington getting past Vanarama National League outfit Boreham Wood 1-0 after extra time at the Wham Stadium having originally drawn 1-1, while Jesse Marsch’s Leeds thumped Cardiff 5-2 at home after an initial 2-2 draw.
Boss Coleman told the PA news agency: “People aren’t expecting a lot of us. We’re playing against a team two leagues above us, in the Premier League, who dismantled Cardiff.
“So we know what they can do to a team – we also know Cardiff managed to score four goals against them, so that should give us a little bit of heart, and the fact we know Crawley knocked them out a couple of years ago can also give you heart.
“We’re under no illusions, we’re playing against a top team, we’ve got to be at our very, very best and then need a lot of luck – and that happens in football. It’s happened to us and for us, so there’s no reason why it can’t happen again.
“We do believe we can do it. You could lose sleep if you worried about their good players, but we’ve got to try to get our good players playing. And we know we’ve got attributes that possibly they haven’t got, and that will be the key if we can cause an upset.
“It’s a potential David v Goliath, but we have to take it as it is – 90 minutes against a team who’ve only got 11, same as us.
“They’ll be on a lot more money and technically better equipped. We get that. But our players have big hearts, you can never fault their attitude or hunger, and we’ve got to hope that comes to the fore.”
Coleman, in charge at Accrington for more than 20 years across two spells, says Saturday will be “like a thank you” to the club’s fans in a season where “we haven’t given them too many highs, less than we normally do.”
Big ties from the recent past have included beating then-Premier League side Burnley in the League Cup in 2016, and FA Cup fourth-round appearances in 2019, 2017 and 2010, when Accrington lost 3-1 at home to Fulham.
Coleman recalls: “(Fulham boss at the time) Roy Hodgson didn’t let the players use the changing rooms because they weren’t fit for habitation, and I laughed because they only had to come once – we were there every other week, so we knew how bad they were!”
Coleman – who stresses the changing rooms now are “fantastic” and the pitch is “one of the best in League One” – has also been looking back to an FA Cup tie at the stadium from 2003-04, when Accrington were in the fifth tier and beat then fourth-tier Huddersfield 1-0 in round one.
“When we played Crawley (in round one this season), we put highlights of that game on just to remind the players that that was the catalyst for this club going forwards,” said Coleman.
“We made quite a bit of money out of that. It was a huge occasion. Along with Brett Ormerod moving from Blackpool to Southampton and us getting a cut of that, that cup run (which subsequently saw them get past Bournemouth, then lose to Colchester) enabled us to go full-time. Without that we wouldn’t be a Football League club.
“That’s how important the FA Cup is to us, and I think we should never forget that. We were playing a team in a league above us and came out on top, and there’s no reason why we can’t on Saturday.”
Coleman, who led Accrington into the Football League in 2006 and League One in 2018, said the money already generated from this year’s FA Cup run “will let us bring in a couple of players between now and the end of the window”, adding: “If we could go one further and get a replay or win, that would be huge for us in what we can do going forward.”
