Good afternoon and welcome to our live blog of this FA Cup fourth round tie, it’s a classic David vs Goliath as Newport welcome Manchester United to Rodney Parade. For Man United, this competition represents a solid shot at silverware and we anticipate Erik ten Hag naming a strong lineup at around 3.30pm, with the kick off coming an hour after that at 4.30pm. The match is on BBC1 with coverage from 4pm, but we will have all the team news, build up and chat prior to that.
One man who won’t be featuring is Marcus Rashford. He is unavailable because of illness, the club have said.
United would not comment on reports the England striker had been spotted in a Belfast night spot during the week.
The club said Rashford had “stayed at Carrington to train as he recovers.”
Earlier this season Ten Hag described Rashford taking part in birthday celebrations after United had lost a match against Manchester City as unacceptable.
“I am aware of it and I spoke with him about it,” Ten Hag said in November. “It is unacceptable. I told him. He apologised and that is it.”
Newport striker Will Evans has gone from milking cows on the family farm to scoring FA Cup goals – and now has boyhood heroes Manchester United in his sights.
United fan Evans meets the Red Devils as Newport – 74 places below their visitors in the football pyramid and financial worlds apart – seek to produce one of the biggest upsets in the competition’s 152-year history.
It will cap an extraordinary journey that has taken Evans from the Powys family farm, rejection at Shrewsbury, and European football at two Welsh Premiership clubs before he finally landed his EFL break at Newport.
“Most kids come home from school and play football in the garden,” Evans said of his formative years at the Llangedwyn farm on the English-Welsh border near Oswestry.
“I’d come home and get the cows ready to be milked. There’s a lot of them too as dad’s got about 1,100 milking cows.
“Mucking out was punishment if I was misbehaving or in my parents’ bad books. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to do, I always wanted to study or go out and play football.”
