Mark Hughes doesn’t foresee too many problems after his Manchester City team were drawn against EB/Streymur in the UEFA Cup yesterday. The team from the Faroe Islands are one of the weakest teams in the competition at this stage, and the official website reports that the Welshman is confident of progress, providing his team make their fitness and quality count.
It sounds as though any fans making the trip over to watch their beloved City play in the first leg will enjoy a unique journey to get to the stadium!
Hughes told us: “I’ve actually had the experience of playing the game over there when I played at international with the Welsh team a few years back.
“It was quite interesting with a lot of trips on little boats to cross expanses of water, so logistically it’ll be a challenge to everybody.
“It’s a long trek to probably a place that not many people know about.”
He underlined: “The fitness factor does come into play just because the teams you face at this stage invariably are in the middle of their season. I think the team we’re going to face from the Faroes will have played 13 games when we meet them.
“So they’re ahead of us in fitness terms, but we’d like to think with the base fitness that professional footballers have at Premier League level, and technically we will be far and away the better side. You would expect that to be enough.
“Obviously the strength of their league is nowhere near the Premier League, so you’d like to think really that we’d progress.”
City fans will hoping that their days of calamity are behind them under Hughes, but could the minnows sneak a surprise win in the first leg, giving the English team plenty to do in the return fixture? Probably not, but as Sparky says, it’s a venture into the unknown for most of his squad.