The Burton Albion boss saw his side fare admirably against a star-studded Red Devils side in 2006, but expects a bigger test against Pep Guardiola <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Manchester City\u2019s class of 2019 present Burton Albion with a tougher test than a Manchester United side which included Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo did, says Nigel Clough.<\/p>\n
Back in 2006, the Brewers were handed a dream FA Cup third round meeting with the Red Devils.<\/p>\n
A non-league side at the time, Clough\u2019s troops held Sir Alex Ferguson\u2019s star-studded team to a 0-0 draw on home soil \u2013 setting up a lucrative replay at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Burton are now preparing to face the other heavyweights from Manchester in a two-legged Carabao Cup semi-final.<\/p>\n
They may be a League One outfit, having only slipped out of the Championship last season, but Clough is aware that the reigning Premier League champions will be his biggest challenge yet.<\/p>\n
A man who tasted League Cup glory in his playing days with Nottingham Forest told reporters when asked which is harder, facing United or City: \u201cI think this one over two legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the pitch is going to be a bit better this time around, if anybody remembers the pitch against Manchester United!<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we’re facing similar sorts of tasks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Rooney and Ronaldo came on after 59 minutes here for Manchester United, it’s a similar sort of prospect with the likes of the quality that Manchester City have.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut away from home, it’s a different thing. When they are on their own patch, as you saw against Liverpool, they’re as good and as confident as anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s when they’ve come off a relatively poor period for them, they’ve lost a couple of matches recently and then they can still play like they did against Liverpool and keep the title race open.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat says an awful lot about them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Whatever happens at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday, and in a return date at the Pirelli Stadium on January 22, Clough is already rightly proud of what his third tier underdogs have achieved.<\/p>\n
The ex-England international added: \u201cHonestly, we are just looking forward to enjoying the experience.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody gives us much of a chance and rightly so but it’s just about the players, everybody, talking about supporters, who have been following the club for 50-60 years never dreamt of us being in a League Cup semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet’s all everybody as one go and enjoy it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery game you have got a chance. It’s just what degree that chance is and ours is extremely thin but there is always a chance in football.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Burton Albion boss saw his side fare admirably against a star-studded Red Devils side in 2006, but expects a bigger test against Pep Guardiola Manchester City\u2019s class of 2019 present Burton Albion with a tougher test than a Manchester United side which included Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo did, says Nigel Clough. Back in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}