Stockport County boss Jim Gannon gets excuses in early ahead of South Shields FA Cup clash

The former Football League side travel to Mariners Park on Saturday in a second qualifying round tie.

Stockport, with a mixture of full-time and part-time players, average home crowds of more than 3,200 while playing in a league higher than part-time Shields.

However, Gannon has expressed his 'concern' over the fixture, citing the travelling, needing to feed players, lack of video coverage of their opponents and Shields’ budget when previewing the fixture.

He said: “When you are in the National League you get the videos from the opposition’s previous game as you have to give the videos to the league and they share them with everyone. That’s fine, it’s a level playing field.

“But when it comes to the opposition from a lower level, you don’t have that coverage. Our chief scout has gone to their game and got the information.

“We have to be concerned about the opposition as they are top of the Evo-Stik Premier, they’re at home and they’ve got a lot of experience.

“And I think our fans would be surprised at the budget they’ve got. They’re the next wave of Darlingtons and Spennymoors. They’ve attracted a lot of players from the National League North.

“They’re a big, strong side and it’s obviously a tasty one for them, they’ll be relishing Stockport County coming to their place.

“We’ve learned a lot of lessons from the likes of Blyth and Darlington last season, Spennymoor. they were all tough games.

“Travel has an effect on it, you’re on a coach for three or four hours, you’re having to feed lads...

“It’s a tough fixture but we’ll deal with all that. We will do things as professionally as possible all week, do things right on the day, then you just pick your strongest side in terms of having the physicality and mentality to be aware it will be a hard game where we need to make sure we are very competitive.”

Stockport sit 12th in the National League North table.