United switch their attention to the Carabao Cup tonight with a tough game against League One opposition as they head to Shrewsbury, who are still looking for their first win of the campaign.
“We need to have a look at how we approach it,” Paul Simpson said. “The players have said they want a cup run, they told us that in Largs when we talked about the games that were coming up.
“They want a good cup run and this is the first opportunity for them to start that off. It’s a really good game to look forward to.”
“It’s a competition that can get exciting very quickly if you stay in it,” he continued. “We’re about to test ourselves against a League One side on their own turf.
“It’s a really good challenge for us, and the players are all up for it. They’re looking forward to it, so we’ll see how everybody is and make our decisions from there.
“It’s a former club for me, but there’s too many of them to worry about things like that. It’s the next game for us and I’m sure I’ll see some familiar faces - and I’m quite sure I’ll get some grief.
“I don’t really mind, to be honest, it isn’t about me it’s about how the players go and perform. If they do what they have been doing for these two games, and through pre-season, they’ll be ok.
“As long as we go and do ourselves justice that’s all that matters. Hopefully all of the players will be right following the weekend and we’ll put out a team that gets the right sort of performance that gets us through in the cup.”
Speaking more about his time with the Shrews, he said: “I think I’ve been back to do some radio commentary, but none of that matters, it’s just the next game for us that I’m looking forward to getting stuck into.
“I’ve got some good memories and I’ve also got some bad memories. But when you get sacked at a club that’s normally the case.
“I think back to when I went in and my remit was to keep them up, we stayed up quite comfortably, and the next season we lost in the last kick of the game in a play-off final.
“I did alright. But then I let myself down because my signings weren’t very good in my last year. I made a lot of money for the club selling Grant Holt but I lost him, Ben Davies, a lot of goals.
“It’s my own fault, I didn’t recruit well enough to keep me in a job, and the consequences are you get the sack, so we move on.
“We’ve got some really good options when it comes to who we select. I have things in my mind that I want to do. I’m not treating it with any sort of disrespect, but as a game we want to desperately go and win.
“I’m not even bothered what they do, it’s about how we go about it and what we can do in terms of our players, and hopefully the team that does get selected performs and gets the result.”
