David Moyes will be reminded of one of his darkest days in football when he sends West Ham out at National League Stockport in the FA Cup third round on Monday evening.
The Scot was less than 10 months into his 11-year-plus reign at Everton when in January 2003, a Toffees side which included a 17-year-old Wayne Rooney travelled to third division Shrewsbury at the same stage and were dumped out of the competition 2-1 thanks to Nigel Jemson’s double.
Former Preston boss Moyes admits being on the wrong end of a giant-killing act sticks with a manager or player just as much as being on the right end, and is determined not to experience it again.
He said: “Does it stick with you? Of course it does because you always remember it, you’ve always got ones like that.
“Look, it’s part of it. I’ve had games where I’ve won games the other way as well when you’re not probably supposed to do when I was at Preston at different times.
“There are lots of different ways to look at it, but you want to try to get through, you want to do well in the cup. We want to try to go as far as we possibly can.”
Moyes is confident his players will be able to manage a potentially tricky tie which might have been even more difficult if the Hatters had been able to welcome a partisan home crowd to Edgeley Park.
However, he knows they cannot allow their standards to drop if they are to progress to the fourth round with the minimum of fuss.
He said: “Over many many years, they have been a very, very good league team, as many teams around that part of Manchester have been. I used to always go and watch games there, I have played there at different times in my career, so I know about them.
“I have watched quite a lot of Conference games. I watched quite a lot of Fylde last year when I was not in work, so I have got an idea.
“We have watched a lot of them, had most games watched since the draw, so we have got a good idea of what we are up against.
“It’s never easy – none of the games are ever easy – and we know we need to play very well to get through.”
