FA Cup 3rd round. Being played behind closed doors.
Sunday 9th January, ko 2:00pm
Live on S4C, S4C Clic and via S4C on BBC iPlayer
Cardiff City boss Steve Morison : “It’s an opportunity. You don’t get many opportunities throughout the season.
"It won’t be a massive amount of changes from us apart from the ones which have been enforced.
"Ultimately, we do understand that Blackburn is around the corner, so we need to start working on how we are going to look heading into that.
"We have lost Ryan [Giles] so we need to adapt and change, let's see how we get on.
"It’ll be a tough test.”
Preston North End boss Ryan Lowe : “I didn’t like playing behind closed doors home or away when we all had to.
“I don’t like the fact that no fans were inside the grounds, football without fans wasn’t very good as we witnessed for more than 12 months.
“It’s going to be a different situation and scenario on Sunday. We are governed by what their Government want to do.
“We’ll focus on what we do on the pitch and hopefully that will pay off. But in terms of there being no fans, it’s not great is it?
“The players will be able to hear more of what we are saying on the sidelines.
“Myself and Mike Marsh were talking the other day about hand signals and whistles to get our messages to the players when there’s a lot of noise in the grounds.
“That won’t be necessary on Sunday at Cardiff, it will be a lot quieter.”
Match Facts
- This will be the 98th meeting between Cardiff City and Preston North End in all competitions but the first time they’ve faced in any competition other than the Football League.
- Preston have lost their last four matches against Cardiff, all in the Championship between June 2020 and November 2021. They last had a longer losing run against them between 1968 and 1972, eight in a row.
- Cardiff have won just two of their last 12 games in the FA Cup (D4 L6), both in third round replays against Mansfield Town in 2017-18 and Carlisle United in 2019-20. They last won an FA Cup tie without the need of a replay in 2014-15, a 3-1 win over Colchester United in the third round.
- Preston North End have lost seven of their last eight FA Cup matches, winning the other 5-1 against Wycombe Wanderers in January 2018.
- Preston have been eliminated in the FA Cup third round in each of the last three seasons, last going out at this stage in more consecutive campaigns between 1927-28 and 1930-31.
Match Officials:
Referee: Andy Woolmer
Assistants: Lee Venamore, Mark Pottage
Fourth Official: Sam Allison