Stockport County v Doncaster Rovers: Grant McCann's EFL Cup promise
GRANT McCANN has never been one to treat cup competitions lightly.
His two spells in charge of Doncaster Rovers undoubtedly illustrate this.
In his first season-long stint in 2018-19, Rovers reached the fifth round of the FA Cup and progressed to the fourth round in 2024-25 - losing out on both occasions to Premier League side Crystal Palace.
Second time around, McCann has also enjoyed two EFL Cup occasions against Everton, nearly beating the Toffees on one occasion, while Rovers secured a lucrative trip to Tottenham Hotspur last term - and a maiden visit to Spurs' new home.
Earlier in last season's competition, a fine 4-0 win at Middlesbrough was also registered, with Rovers' liking for the cups under McCann being self-evident. Saturday is no different.
McCann said: "We know the importance of cup competitions. In this cup last year, we obviously profited massively off the trip to Tottenham and playing at their stadium in front of maybe fifty or sixty thousand people on that night.
"The benefits of the cup is that if you can get to round two and three, when the Premier League clubs come in, there's obvious a nice reward and financially that's huge for clubs our size to see if we can earn money from the cups.
"The (big) games have been really beneficial to help us do things within the clubs, whether that be improving contracts or signing players in January, whatever it may be. It's helped us massively."
Rovers will be without Frankie Okoronkwo, Matty Pearson, Robbie Gotts and James Husband with the latter out for four to six weeks with a hamstring issue. Tom Nixon also won't be risked.
While some managers, especially in the second tier, may treat this competition not as seriously as they might have ordinarily done with it falling a week before the start of the EFL season, McCann - unsurprisingly given his history - won’t be.
He continued: "It will be interesting to see how some clubs treat it; whether there are some who treat it maybe as another glorified friendly and use it that way. Or maybe they are thinking like us as we see this as our game and we'll be as strong as we possibly can."