Cambridge United may have missed out on a 'glamour tie' again in the FA Cup draw, but manager Roy McFarland believes the fifth round tie at the Abbey against Bolton Wanderers gives his side a real chance to progress to the quarter-finals.

He admitted to the Cambridge Evening News: "None of our Cup draws so far have really grabbed you. Obviously, after beating Wrexham we wanted the big prize of a match against a Premiership club, but this is the next best thing, a home tie in which we have a realistic opportunity of getting through to the quarter-finals."

Reaching that stage of the competition would be nothing new for the club, who made two consecutive runs to the last eight in 1990 and 1991 before being knocked out by Crystal Palace and Arsenal respectively.

McFarland continued: "Make no mistake, this is just the kind of match Bolton would not have wanted. They know they are not going to make much money out of it, although I'm sure we'll get a full house at the Abbey, and they'll see it as a very dangerous game. We had a very good win against another Division One side, Crystal Palace, in the third round, and the players will be confident about following that up.

"We played Bolton in a friendly before, the start of this season, losing 1-0, but it was a more than respectable performance."

Turning his attention to the league, and the fact that Chesterfield's win at the weekend dumped the U's to the bottom of Division Two, McFarland commented, "Nobody likes to see the the club in this position, but the Cup performance, on top of other recent League displays makes us confident we can soon start climbing the table."

Meanwhile new Bolton manager Sam Allardyce, the man who replaced McFarland's former Derby County teammate Colin Todd at the Reebok Stadium last month, told his club's official web site, "Roy McFarland and his Cambridge side would love to claim our scalps."

He added, "It will be a difficult game, a physical one with their players ready to play above themselves. Our players will have to be mentally prepared for the game and it is a potential banana skin."

He echoed McFarland's thoughts about the financial rewards of the tie but is obviously the happier of the two managers from his comments about the draw: "In terms of the financial rewards the draw is not good for the club but it represents an excellent chance for us to progress into the quarter finals and once we are there you never know what can happen in the Cup. Hopefully by the time we come to play at Cambridge we will have already booked our place in one Wembley final.

"Looking at the teams which were left in the hat for the fifth round I suppose there could only have been one better draw for us and that would have been Cambridge at home."

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