Rotherham United travel to Craven Cottage for tonight’s FA Cup clash against Fulham with the home side currently thirteenth in the Premier League, the Millers bottom of the Championship.
Like the Millers, this is Fulham’s first game in this competition this season and they come into it on the back of a New Year’s Eve home win against Arsenal. Their last home loss was just before Christmas when Burnley beat them two-nil. The Cottagers are already through to the semi-final of the Carabao Cup after beating Everton in the quarter-final game at Goodison Park in a penalty shoot-out.
Meanwhile the Millers are still waiting for an away win this season but are three unbeaten coming into this FA Cup game with the last away game seeing them come from behind twice to get a point against Blackburn Rovers.
Fulham’s Head Coach Marco Silva told Fulham’s Official Site that they have had a really busy December saying, ‘We are proud to play in this competition and take it really seriously and the eleven who start will have the desire to go through in this competition. And, of course, we have to respect our competition, Rotherham, but, first of all, we have to respect ourselves. We are going to be playing against a side who come here with a dream of getting through over a Premier League side but we have to show on the pitch that we are better than them but that’s going to be tough.’
Midfielder Tom Cairney also spoke saying, ‘Your career’s are so short and you don’t get many opportunities to get to Wembley and give fans special memories and I want to go further than we did last year. But it will be tough because Rotherham will come down and try and upset us and they’ve got some very experiences players but if we play like we can we should win.’
Hosts Fulham will be without Calvin Bassey, Fode Balo-Toure and Alex Iwobi who are all away on international duty while Tim Ream will probably not be risked after having a calf problem. But it could be that Marco Silva includes some of the younger members in the Fulham ranks in the match day squad.
Injury news for the Millers is that the long term injured are looking ‘very doubtful’ to be included in the squad going to the capital tonight.
‘The FA Cup is fantastic,’ Millers Head Coach Leam Richardson told the Official Site. ‘We’re away to a Premier League team who have won six out of ten at Craven Cottage so we know the challenge will be a really, strong, healthy one. We’ll go down there with the will to win and the will to give a real strong account of ourselves.’
Striker Tom Eaves also had his say on the game saying, ‘I love playing at Craven Cottage and I’ve actually scored there before. It would be nice to go there and get a win but it’s going to be a really tough test. In fairness, for me, the league is the priority and if you ask a lot of players – and fans – if they want a good cup run then I think it would be divided.’
The referee for this cup game is Dean Whitestone from Northampton.
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