League of Ireland Soccer:WITH HIS side heading into the weekend as league leaders, the first time the club has found itself at the top of the pile since it last won the title some 15 years ago, Dundalk manager Ian Foster suddenly finds himself having to battle heightened expectations at Oriel Park ahead of tonight's trip to Sporting Fingal.
The Englishman is clearly delighted with way his players have started the new campaign and confident they can get better over the course of the months ahead but the 33-year-old is nevertheless busily playing down Dundalk’s prospects of suddenly adding title number 10 at the end of the season.
“Look, this club finished three points above the relegation play-off position in the table last year and you can’t move from that to winning the league in one go,” he says, before adding: “Well, not in my opinion, anyway.”
Still, there have been some impressive performances and a couple of very fine wins in recent weeks and confidence will be high ahead of the trip to Santry as the club looks to build on long-awaited victories over other Dublin clubs.
“Well, we’ve got a couple of monkeys off our backs by winning in the Premier Division in Dublin, by beating Shamrock Rovers and by beating UCD and it’s been good to break all those runs,” he says. “We have a lot to do at this club, though. We have to strengthen the squad because at the moment we have four amateurs on the bench for most games.
“I know it’s an old cliche but we’re really trying to take it one game at a time although that’s easier said than done when you’ve looking at playing Friday, Monday, Friday, Monday . . . for the next month or so. We’ll see how we’re fixed at the end of all that.”
He is, at least, fairly well fixed for this evening with only long-term absentees Tiarnan Mulvenna and Alan Cawley missing for the clash with Sporting Fingal.
The Dubliners have Shaun Williams and Keith Quinn suspended while John Frost is out injured (hamstring) and the likes of Brendan Clarke, Shane Barrett and Kevin Dawson all face late tests but Shane McFaul returns from suspension and Lorcan Fitzgerald is, manager Liam Buckley reckons, ready to start again after recovering from a fractured cheekbone.
Shamrock Rovers will look to build on last week’s fine win over Bohemians in Tallaght but Michael O’Neill still has a long injury list to contend with going into the game. Gary Twigg may start but Dessie Baker, Pat Sullivan, Stephen Bradley and Craig Sives are still out while Stephen Rice and Ollie Cahill are rated as very doubtful. United could have a full squad to choose from as Robbie Martin and Brendan McGill have been back training this week.
In the night’s other top-flight game Bohemians will take on Galway United without Anto Murphy, Stephen Gray (both Achilles) or Mark Rossiter (hamstring) while United travel without Thomas Heary (knee). They will, however, have Barry Ryan available after the goalkeeper missed the League Cup game during the weekend at the Brandywell.
In the First Division, meanwhile, Waterford United travel to Monaghan United looking to make it eight wins from eight in all competitions and the visitors look set to hand a debut to George O’Callaghan, whose international clearance has been received over the past few days.
