FA Cup Match Preview: Wycombe Wanderers v Aston Villa

by Dek Hogan

Who are we playing?
Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday 9th January at 12.45pm in the FA Cup Third Round.

Where are we playing?
Wycombe Wanderers Football Club Ltd
Adams Park
Hillbottom Road
High Wycombe
Bucks HP12 4HJ

on |BT

Can I go? 
Away allocation sold out

Easy to get to?
Chiltern run trains to High Wycombe at decent prices and are increasing capacity for the game.

Can I watch it on telly
BT Sport clearly hoping for a giant killing.

Big game?
Huge.

Or it would have been huge had the powers that be not decided to have a full Premier League programme in midweek.

Garde may have to rotate if he thinks he's got a cat in hell's chance of getting anything out of the Palace game on the Tuesday.

To be honest, those of us who think relegation is inevitable would probably go for playing our strongest line up in the cup game but the Frenchman can't be seen to be giving up on survival, however unlikely, so we'd expect fringe players to be given a chance in Bucks.

The FA Cup provided a great adventure last season and our success in the competition helped create a feelgood factor that no doubt played some small part in our survival in the Prem.

This time round, we already look worse than doomed in the league. Some would say going out of the cup is a good thing because we can focus on getting to safety. Straw clutching at best that.

Wycombe will see this as an ideal opportunity to take a major scalp and you just know they'll give it their all. The last two away games have shown precious little evidence of our team giving their all.

Do Wycombe boast any famous fans?
Well, there's Bill Turnbull from breakfast telly and that's about it.

We've got the bloke who writes the Jack Reacher books

So we win.

Who's playing for us?
Injuries abound still. The real kick in the teeth is that Adama is out for three months or so with broken foot. Not good. We'd hope that Okore would be restored to the back line and why not give Libor a run out before he's sold off cheap. Hutton is almost certainly out and Gabby isn't ready.

Who's playing for them?
Some Wycombe players - like you've heard of them. Wycombe are going well in their league so they'll probably rotate too.


Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:

• We have 2 wins over Wycombe in competitive games, both in the League Cup. They've yet to beat us or claim a draw.

• We came from behind to smash Wycombe 8-3 at their place in 2005. Even Milan Baros scored.

• We last faced Wycombe in a pre season friendly in 2013, drawing 2-2 on that occasion

Prediction
A giant killing to put the Top Hat on a terrible season. 3-2 to Wanderers.