Tuesday 20th November 2018, Kick Off 7.45pm
Tomorrow evening we travel to the Showgrounds to face third placed Ballymena United for the second time in ten days.
After a lacklustre performance in the recent 1-0 defeat at the Oval and the poor second half on Saturday against 10 man Coleraine, we really need to find our form if we are to start making inroads on the top six. Our form at the Showgrounds has been a lot better than our home form against United with just one defeat in our last 15 league visits. Our last two league visits resulting in a 4-2 win in March 2017 with goals from Curtis Allen (3) and Stevie Gordon while our last league visit, in September of last season, yielded a 3-1 win with goals from Allen, Marcus Kane and John McGuigan. A similar outcome is what we need tomorrow night.
Ronnie McFall said after a light training session this evening;” I’m not happy with our second half performances in the last two matches. We got ourselves into winning positions with great first half performances against both Crusaders and Coleraine but went into our shells in both games when we lost an equaliser early in the second half of both matches. Saturday at Coleraine felt like a defeat. Even after they equalised we created a few decent chances but consistently made the wrong decisions in front of goal. Also when they were down to ten men they raised their game – as you’d expect – but too many of our players slackened off and we paid the price for that. The players were sent out to take advantage of the extra man but too many didn’t do it. That isn’t acceptable when you get into a winning position somewhere like Coleraine and the players have been clearly told that.
For tomorrow we’re still without John Herron who finishes his suspension and John McGuigan who has two matches left of his. It will be the same squad with those two out. We might make a couple of changes but really the priority is for the players to play for the whole 90 minutes the way they have been doing in the first half. If they do that I’d be confident of getting the result we need.”
