Saturday 17th November 2018, Kick Off 3.00pm
On Saturday we try to get our league campaign back on the rails with a visit to Coleraine Showgrounds.
Despite their unexpectedly shaky start to the season, Coleraine have lost just two league matches – to Cliftonville and Glenavon, both at home in October – and sit one place and six points ahead of us in the table. Their other defeat of course was against us at the Oval two weeks ago in the Bet McLean League Cup at the Oval. Our last win at the Showgrounds was a 2-1 win at the Showgrounds in May 2016 through goals from Curtis Allen and Calum Birney. Despite it being just over two years ago, those two plus Elliott Morris are the only players of the thirteen who figured that night who are still at the club. We were unlucky to only draw our last meeting in August when – probably our worst habit this season – a late equaliser from Eoin Bradley cancelled out our 2-1 lead through goals from Allen and Peter McMahon.
Ronnie McFall: “The performance in the second half on Tuesday night against Crusaders was simply unacceptable. We got ourselves into a very good, winning position that we deserved so there was no excuse for that second half capitulation. We made the same unforced individual mistakes players have made time after time this season. We’ve worked hard in training on those areas but we keep performing the same way around our penalty area. The players making those mistakes are under no illusion that they will be replaced unless this improved and improves quickly. The midfield and forwards did their jobs to twice get us into the lead so it was frustrating for everyone to see what happened in the second half.
Coleraine are a good team who finished 26 points ahead of us last season and that’s something that shouldn’t happen at Glentoran. They’ve had a couple of good wins since we beat them at the Oval but we’ve beaten them once this season and I thought our overall performance was worthy the win when we drew with them at the Oval in August. So we’ll go in with a clear plan to win the match and get back into a position where we can get back into the top six. John Herron and John McGuigan are still suspended but we have Joe Crowe and Dylan Davidson available again so they’ll come straight back into contention.
Everyone is aware that there are a number of areas we need to strengthen in the team and I’m working hard, day and night sourcing good players for the January window. I’ll be very disappointed if we can’t bring in at least one or two who can strengthen the starting line up”.
