Glenavon v Glentoran
Saturday 10 February 2018, 3.00pm
On Saturday we travel to Lurgan for our first meeting since November 14th.
Although we go into this match three league places and eighteen points behind Glenavon, our last ten meetings have been fairly even with three wins each and three draws so clearly these matches aren’t easy to predict.
Our last meeting saw us lose a very even match 1-3 after Robbie McDaid’s fourth minute opener (Robbie has scored all three of our goals against Glenavon this season) was quickly equalised and despite a decent second half performances two late penalties cost us the points.
Like us, Glenavon made two signings in the January window, bringing in striker Stephen Murray (a Glentoran target in 2014 when Eddie Patterson was manager) and our outgoing midfielder Eric Foley on deadline day. After an outstanding run of form since the New Year this has been a difficult week for Glenavon with a shock exit from the Irish Cup to Bluefin Championship team Loughgall followed by a 6-1 hammering by Crusaders on Tuesday night. Both defeats were at Mourneview Park. Ronnie McFall and his players will be hoping to extend this poor run on Saturday following our own two straight League victories over Cliftonville and Warrenpoint Town.
Manager Ronnie McFall said: “It was disappointing to have last week’s match at Coleraine postponed as confidence is high among the squad after our two good wins against Cliftonville and Warrenpoint Town. But we’ve got some momentum going now so we’ll take that with us to Mourneview on Saturday. Calum Birney will miss this one as the last game of his suspension while James Knowles could be out for another 3 or 4 weeks as his recent knee injury is a bit worse than we’d hoped. But apart from that we’ve a full squad available on Saturday.”
