Neilson faces relatives chirping up for Canaries tickets

Drawing Norwich City in the fourth round of the FA Cup has left assistant Town manager Alan Neilson with numerous ticket requests from family members, writes Mark Wood.

He revealed: “I enjoyed the draw. All my mum’s family are from Norwich. All my cousins live in Norwich except from one.

“I will get a lot of ticket requests, but I think a lot of them will get them in the Norwich end, but they’ll be shouting for us at Luton.

“I’m happy. It’s a Premiership club, the pitch should be absolutely superb, the stadium and it should be a great experience for the lads.

“But we’re going to go out there and try and win the game.

“Normally we’re always under pressure to win the games.

“I think as the gaffer said in the last round, we were underdogs.

“We were underdogs and we’ll be going there as underdogs again so we will go there and fingers crossed the same result would be nice.”

The cup competitions were not particularly kind to Neilson during his playing career, but he’s hoping Town’s players will be able to thrive as underdogs.

He added: “I made my debut for Newcastle, but my first FA Cup game was at Southampton in a local derby, on a Sunday against Portsmouth.

“I never played for Newcastle in the FA Cup. I went to Southampton and my first FA Cup tie was a derby, and I will never forget it.

“I made a mistake and I lost the ball and they smashed it into the top corner and I turned around and thought, oh no.

“Luckily I looked around and the offside flag went up. It was Paul Walsh who’d stuck one in the top corner for Portsmouth.

“My heart went, na, na, na (deep intake of breath)...

“The closest I ever got, we lost in the sixth round at Newcastle when I was in the squad.

“That’s the closest so I never really had any great experiences of that.

“The closest I got to Wembley was at Southampton in the Coca Cola Cup when we lost to Stockport in the quarter-finals.

“Stockport got into both semi-finals that year with Dave Jones. Not great experiences. But as a coach it’s great for the lads.”