Non-league Marine will need a lot of luck if they are to cause the biggest of FA Cup upsets against Jose Mourinho’s Tottenham – but they have a secret weapon.
Among their ranks, they have a player who knows how to beat Spurs against the odds, having done it as a youngster while on Liverpool’s books.
David Raven, 35, has played a huge role in helping the eighth-tier outfit secure a dream tie and now he’ll be passing on all that wisdom he learned in the League Cup tie in December 2004.
Liverpool were definitely considered the bigger club, but Rafael Benitez’s decision to rest many senior players immediately made the north London side the favourites to advance to the semi-finals.
Raven, 19 years old at the time, was one of a number of youngsters given the nod at White Hart Lane. The likes of Stephen Warnock, Zak Whitbread, Darren Potter, Neil Mellor and Jon Welsh also featured in north London..
The youthful Reds were under the cosh a number of times but incredibly took Spurs to penalties after Florent Sinama-Pongolle cancelled out Jermain Defoe’s strike in extra-time.
And Liverpool only went and nicked the cup tie with a 4-3 win in the shootout.
Raven acquitted himself brilliantly, most notably making an excellent last-ditch block to deny Defoe a certain goal in normal time.
He now wants to do it all again just over 16 years on and believes Marine can pull off a shock against Mourinho’s men.
“It’s David and Goliath stuff, one of them where we are being written off and people may say rightly so, it’s a done deal already,” Raven told talkSPORT.
“So it’s a mentality thing for us. If we mentally prepare right, like we have done for the other games, then we stand a chance. There is a chance.
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“We want to approach the game like that and give it everything we’ve got because you just never know what happens, you just don’t know.
“It’ll be a record if we do it. The four-minute mile wasn’t done before, Mount Everest wasn’t climbed before. This is our Everest and this is how we’re going to approach it.”
Not only that, Raven wants to play against Tottenham‘s big guns as he believes that could work in Marine’s favour.
“When you play against well-established players coming to Marine, it’s quite tough for them mentally,” he explains. “They might think: ‘oh, what am I doing here? Why can’t they play the under-18s, gaffer?’”
“So in a roundabout way I’d be quite happy to play against the first team.
“Yeah they can put ten past you but they’ve also got the potential to not turn up in the right frame of mind because the well-established players don’t need to impress.
“As I say, 19, 20-year-old boys are going to be running around fit and strong. That’s the way I’m going to be looking at it.”
talkSPORT and talkSPORT 2 bring you NINE FA Cup third-round commentaries this weekend, including national radio commentary of Marine vs Tottenham on Sunday, kick-off 5pm.
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