MARK Cooper knows a thing or two about springing FA Cup upsets, but tomorrow the Swindon Town manager will be guarding against a giantkilling in the world’s oldest knockout competition.

While in the hotseat at Kettering and Tamworth, Cooper masterminded victories over Notts County, Bournemouth and Hartlepool as well as taking Stoke to penalties - all in a remarkable four-year period which made him one of the most coveted young British bosses around.

The 44-year-old therefore has a thorough knowledge of what it takes for non-league sides to dump their league counterparts out of the tournament, and he’s not about to let his players be rolled over by Skrill Premier outfit Macclesfield this weekend.

“They’ll be saying ‘let’s put them under pressure, let’s get through the first 20 minutes if we can without conceding a goal and then it becomes interesting’,” Cooper told the Advertiser.

“They’ll want to stay in the game as long as they can, they’ll make it uncomfortable, they’ll get in your face and then they’ll try and play their football. You try to do anything you can to make the opposition as uncomfortable as possible.”

Swindon have an uncanny knack of hitting the headlines as the victim of an FA Cup upset. The Robins have been knocked out of the competition by non-league sides four times since 1997, including defeats to Stevenage, Histon, Crawley and Macclesfield 12 months ago, and Cooper thinks avoiding a very public humiliation is all about attitude rather than ability.

“I’ve managed in those teams and the league teams we knocked out I felt possibly hadn’t given as much respect to the players I had as they deserved,” he said. “Perhaps they hadn’t prepared properly. I’m not going to name the teams.

“We knocked a few league teams out and for me it came down to application and preparation. If you don’t do it and you don’t talk about the threats they’ve got then you are susceptible to getting knocked out of the FA Cup.”

Ideally, Cooper would have faced Macclesfield at the County Ground, though Cooper told the local media on Thursday that he expects the Silkmen’s Moss Rose pitch to be in good condition tomorrow afternoon.

Macc have scored 10 goals in their last two games, 14 in their last four and destroyed Vauxhall Motors 7-0 to reach the first round proper of the cup.

“If you want to play a non-league team you want to be at home and I’m fully aware of non-league teams beating league teams in the FA Cup. Straight away you know it’s going to be a very difficult tie,” he said.

“The one thing about it is the pitch will be very good, they are doing very well, they’re on a good run of form, they’ve got players scoring goals so make no bones about it it’s going to be a very tough game.

“I’ve said to the players, if we’re not at it and we don’t match them physically and for desire, we’ll get beat.

“I’ve seen some games, I watched their last two games, and they play some really good football. We know that at three o’clock Saturday they’re going to be asking questions physically, mentally and we have to stand up to them.

“If we’re not at it, we’ll get beat. It’s as simple as that. No matter how good we are technically, if we don’t turn up and compete and earn the right to play the football we can then we’ll get beat.

“We have to make sure the players are ready to go. It’s always a concern you have when you go to play a non-league team but we have to be at it.

“By hook or by crook we have to be at it, we have to do whatever we have to do to get through. We have to run, run and run until we get the ball back and the quicker we do it the better.”