Preview | City back on Isuzu FA Trophy business

City return to Isuzu FA Trophy business at the weekend as we make the long trip up to Marine in the fourth round.

Our hosts are members of The National League North, where they sit just above half-way in 11^th position.

They have beaten Stocksbridge Park Steels and Curzon Ashton to reach this stage of the competition, whilst for City, we started with a penalty shoot-out victory over Hartpury before a 1-0 triumph over Havant & Waterlooville. Further penalty shoot-outs were required to overcome higher level opponents in Slough Town and Worthing.

“We want to give the club and fans some history and it would be nice to do it in this competition,” said manager, Daf Williams. “The League is our priority, and we’ve made no secret of that, but we want to progress as far as we can in every cup competition that we enter.

“We’ve shown plenty of resilience so far in the FA Trophy; we’ve held our nerve in three penalty shoot-outs and beaten two opponents from higher levels.

“Now we prepare to face another at the weekend. It’s going to be a tough challenge, but one that we are looking forward to.

“We want to make amends for the disappointment that we all felt following Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Evesham United.

“Our standards will need to be much better. We were too slow and passive last weekend and not at the races.

“I was pleased with our reaction to get something from the game having found ourselves two goals down, but it took their second goal to bring us to life and that is not acceptable.

“Credit to Evesham because they were well-organised and very good at what they did, but we fell well short of where I expect us to be.

“I haven’t had to apologise to the fans so far, but I feel that I need to after our last performance and we will be doing all we can to put things right, starting on Saturday.”