FA Cup third round, transfer window news and more: football countdown – live

The Wrexham manager, Phil Parkinson, is full of beans ahead of the National League high-fliers’ trip to Coventry, reports PA Media.

“Obviously Coventry offer a very different challenge to what Farnborough [their second-round opponents] did,” he said. “The out of possession stuff is going to be really important because you’ve got to respect Coventry are going to have a lot of the ball, like we did against Farnborough.

“We’ve got to make sure we’ve got nice distance while out of possession, but equally I said to the lads when we win it back we’ve got to look to play ourselves. We’ve got the players capable of passing the ball, getting control of games and that’s what I’m looking forward to seeing us do.

“We’re not just going there to hang in there, we’re going there to play, we’ll work hard to obviously make it difficult and restrict space when Coventry have got the ball.

“The FA Cup is the competition when I was growing up, was probably the biggest weekend in the football calendar at the time and everyone looked forward to the FA Cup.

“That stays with you, I still feel it’s got its magic, I really do, there’s always a different feel to FA Cup games and we go there like I say with nothing to lose at all. We’ll play with a real freedom and enjoy the day.”

And of course there’ll be more Hollywood-owner hoopla should Parkinson’s side cause an upset.

“These lads have played under or lived with quite a lot of expectation for a while,” said Parkinson of the attention afforded the club since Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took over. “We’ve always got the TV camera at live games, we’ve had loads of them – I’ve lost count the number of times we’ve been on TV this year.”