Nathan Doyle aims to make the most of his FA Cup reprieve by steering City into the third round tonight.

Doyle is free to resume engine-room duties against Brentford at Valley Parade after last week’s dismissal was wiped out on appeal.

And the robust midfielder is keen to carry on from where he left off against the high-flying League One visitors.

Doyle said: “I thought the red card was very harsh at the time and you could see I did nothing wrong when we looked back at it on the DVD.

“The referee got a lot of decisions in the melee wrong. There were loads of people in there and if he sent me off, another seven or eight should have gone.

“You work with your team-mates day in, day out and treat them like brothers. You look after your football family and the recklessness of the tackle (on James Mere-dith) was a joke.

“Not every appeal goes the way it should do but I’m just glad mine was overturned and hopefully we can kick on in the cup.”

City will check on Carl McHugh, who missed training yesterday suffering from a throat infection. After a free midweek, another hectic run beckons but Doyle believes it is a good opportunity to build up momentum.

He added: “It was nice to get away from the training ground for a couple of days and spend some time with your family. But now we’re back to work and ready to go again.

“There will be teams that don’t have games for a week or two now but hopefully we can carry on our winning mentality.

“Brentford are doing well but so are we. We’re not mid-table or bottom of our league so both teams are going into it in high spirits.”

Phil Parkinson is likely to shuffle things round again as City embark on the first of three cup ties in the next 11 days.

He will have one eye on the JPT selection rules for Tuesday’s trip to Port Vale, when clubs must field six of the starting line-up from their previous game.

But he is not under-estimating the size of the task against a Bees side currently sitting fifth in the division above.

Parkinson said: “Brentford are a good side. Teams like them and MK Dons are really fancying their chances this year to get out of that division because it’s not as strong.

“Uwe (Rosler) has built a decent team with predominantly young players. With young players you do get that extra energy and you can see that in the way we play.

“The lads know what to expect but I do feel we’ve got a good chance if we play at our best.

“You can see we’ve benefitted from being away from the training ground for a couple of days . Even the ones who haven’t played all the football have had to travel backwards and forwards.”

Curtis Good and Blair Turgott will both feature in the squad but Craig Forsyth is not allowed to play. Tom Naylor’s involvement will hinge on whether City decide to reach a financial agreement with Derby.

Brentford boss Rosler made his final appearance as a player against the Bantams at West Brom in 2001.

The German took over the Bees 18 months ago and steered them to ninth in League One last season. Now they head north unbeaten in eight games and fresh from beating Sheffield United.

Parkinson added: “This is as hard a game as we’ll have all season. We go into it as underdogs but we know we have the capabilities of beating teams from higher divisions.

“To do that we’ll have to be strong in all departments and have a strong bench as well. That could be the deciding factor.

“Brentford come here on the crest of a wave but we are confident as well. They’ve got the Johnstone Paint in midweek as well as us so we’ve got the same (selection) dilemmas going into this game.”