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Your support makes all the difference.In one respect, Manchester United and Shrewsbury Town are preparing for their FA Cup tie on an equal footing. Shrewsbury are training by the tree-lined avenues of Lilleshall, the country house cum sports centre where Alf Ramsey plotted the great triumph of 1966.
“Why England got rid of this place, I shall never know,” said Shrewsbury’s manager, Micky Mellon, standing in its library, with its volumes of Dickens that Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen may not have flicked open when they trained here at the FA’s centre of excellence.
Shrewsbury are using Lilleshall because their own training pitches are waterlogged and, though there are some facilities in the town, they have been booked for half-term football schools. A new training centre is planned but, until it opens, Lilleshall is an elegant bolthole.
It would be tempting to call tomorrow’s encounter a Roy of the Rovers story except for the fact that Melchester Rovers were a vastly successful top-flight club – 13 titles, 11 FA Cups and no less than eight European trophies. They are Manchester United in thin disguise.
Nevertheless, as Wayne Rooney would know, Shrewsbury have felled their giants. The Manchester United captain, who will be absent from the the tie through injury, has seldom enjoyed the FA Cup, a trophy he has never won.
His first game in the competition was in 2003 at Shrewsbury’s original ground, Gay Meadow, the one where Fred Davies would sit in his coracle behind the stand and fish out the balls that fell into the River Severn.
Everton were beaten 2-1 in one of the worst humiliations of David Moyes’ managerial career, although it was mitigated by the fact it was inflicted by a club for whom he used to play. When Moyes became manager of Manchester United, the headline in the Shropshire Star was “Ex-Shrewsbury Ace Confirmed as New United Boss”.
There will be a new United boss sooner rather than later, although it may not be Louis van Gaal’s deputy, Ryan Giggs, whom Mellon knows well. They did their coaching badges together, the first intake at England’s new base at St George’s Park. Giggs may take over temporarily, especially if Shrewsbury win tomorrow.
“I think that until you are out there and doing it, you won’t really know if you have the qualities that are needed to manage,” Mellon said. “You can’t role-play or read it out of books but certainly Ryan was very, very clear on the way that he wanted the game of football to be played.
“I don’t buy into the idea that he is not forceful enough. I think he is very steely-minded. He has a good presence about him but I don’t believe you’ll know if anybody is going to be a manager until they are in the technical area, getting beat and having things thrown at them. That’s when you’ll know.”
Should he start in the lower leagues, Giggs will find a different world to the one he has always known. “It’s a different challenge but I don’t think it’s any less than it would be in the Premier League,” said Mellon. “We don’t have a training ground, we come 29 miles to train here, we get sandwiches from the local butty shop, the soup gets here just about half warm when the kit man goes to get it.
“We wash our own kit and we count ourselves very fortunate to be in football.”
When clubs like Shrewsbury draw the likes of Manchester United they are assumed to have come from nowhere. The tie is supposedly the only game they will play and all the matches played after the cameras have left are irrelevant. After Shrewsbury beat Everton, Nigel Jemson, who had won the League Cup with Nottingham Forest, sat in Gay Meadow’s main stand with a bottle of champagne and Rooney’s shirt and said that if Kevin Ratcliffe’s young players “carry on listening to what they are told, we’ll have a few more occasions like this”.
They drew Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and lost, gallantly, 4-0 – but there were no more occasions. Ten of the final 11 games were lost and Shrewsbury were relegated from the Football League.
Last weekend’s game at Blackpool mattered for many reasons. Mellon was facing the club where he spent three years, in the town where he still lives. Shrewsbury, unusually for a side who have enjoyed a significant cup run, had played more matches than the teams around them. Had they lost, they could have begun preparing for Manchester United in League One’s relegation zone.
They won 3-2, and were 3-0 up at one point. The only part of Bloomfield Road that looked anywhere near populated was the away end, loud and boisterous with the constant shouts of “Salop”.
“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” said Mellon above the screech of the seagulls overhead. “Shrewsbury is not a town where people tend to stay. A lot of them go to the North-west, and we have fabulous support in London.”
He and many of his team know what to expect. In October 2014, they faced Chelsea at New Meadow in the League Cup. “We were 1-1 with 15 minutes left,” said Shrewsbury’s striker, Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro. “We had just scored but then they suddenly became quicker, grew stronger and more physical. They even looked bigger.” Chelsea scored the winner with nine minutes remaining. “At the end, you couldn’t speak because you had given everything,” he said.
Mellon did find time to speak to Jose Mourinho though. “He actually said we gave them a tougher game than a lot of their opponents that season,” Mellon recalled. “I laughed and he went: ‘No, I am serious. I congratulate you on that.’ I thanked him and said: ‘I am sorry we never knocked you out’.” Louis van Gaal would settle for the same conversation.
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