Pep Guardiola has had a good week in the Premier League and few outside Gloucestershire would imagine it ending any differently on Saturday night, but if Manchester City’s garlanded manager has a nagging doubt ahead of the trip to Cheltenham it probably begins with the ball in Ben Tozer’s hands.
Cheltenham’s winning goal in the third round against Mansfield was simplicity itself: Tozer, the captain, hurled a throw to the near post, where fellow centre-half Will Boyle powered in a header.
Knowing what is coming and stopping it are different matters, though. Remarkably, Boyle’s four goals this season have all been headers from Tozer’s throws.
League Two Cheltenham are the rankest of outsiders, but as if to underline how strange things can and do happen in football, on Tuesday night Newport goalkeeper Tom King’s goal kick flew over the Cheltenham defence, bounced once, and ended up in their net.
“I’ve never seen a keeper score, except on telly,” Tozer tells i. “It’s weird – it just flew by. It seemed to pick up speed because of the wind. Our goalkeeper, Josh Griffiths, is 6ft 6in, so for that to go over him is some effort.”
Now 30, and at his seventh club, Tozer admits the FA Cup bug can still bite.
“I get nervous for the draw. You want the good, big ties and the boys in the dressing room will be buzzing for it, but the fact is that the league is much more important.”
Three years ago his Newport team were eight minutes from beating Spurs in the fourth round, before losing the replay at Wembley.
“That is definitely my biggest highlight so far, especially when the team sheet went in and you saw so many high-profile players, the likes of Harry Kane, starting. You are up against the best and the crowd that night was bouncing.
“I’m quite a driven person and after the game the lads were excited with the draw but, typical of me, I was fuming that we should have beaten them. To concede from a corner was frustrating.”
Newport’s goal that night was headed in by Padraig Amond but – you may have already guessed – it began with a Tozer long throw. He says he never intended to be a latter-day Rory Delap and discovered his prowess by accident.
“I hadn’t used a long throw until I was with Northampton and we were losing a game. I just picked it up and launched it into the middle. After that it got used a lot more.
“I don’t practise them and adrenalin can play a big part. At Wembley, in a play-off final, the first one I took cleared the back post. That’s just the occasion, but I try to mix them up – you can’t always throw to the same place.”
It also helps having Boyle to aim at. “Boyley is very aggressive. He takes a fly at the ball and goes and attacks it,” Tozer added.
The Robins also have a livewire striker in Alfie May, whose equaliser against Mansfield, cutting in from the left, was the sort of goal one might imagine City scoring.
“He’s quite off the cuff. He can twist and turn and score a real variety of goals. He’s definitely an asset to have up front.
“It’s a shame we won’t have the crowd around us but we are in our familiar surroundings. The pitch isn’t as good as in the Premier League. Newport played City last year and said they couldn’t get near David Silva, but sometimes we can launch the ball into the box from the halfway line and put some pressure on if we can’t get near their goal in normal play.”
Unlike City, Cheltenham are stuttering in the league but they don’t concede many goals and have bounced back from real trauma in last season’s play-offs: they won 2-0 at Northampton, then contrived to lose 3-0 at home.
“We had never lost by more than one goal all season,” Tozer says. “It was tough to swallow and it hurt. We definitely used it as fuel this season.”
As for City, Tozer hopes they put out their strongest team, even if star striker Sergio Aguero is unavailable after testing positive for Covid-19 earlier this week.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, we are massive underdogs but you want to test yourself against the best in any sport. It will be something to look back at, like facing Harry Kane, when I’m retired and my kids are grown up.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2Y4jyrl
Post a Comment