Mahon urges his players to bounce back straight away

Collins side has undergone some changes in the break as they lost several players while brought in new faces, one of which is former Shamrock Rovers midfielder Robert Bayly.

The Blues will be making the journey to the North East on the back of a solid 2-0 win away to Shelbourne, so there will be a certain juxtaposition of confidence coming into the game.

Drogheda’s 2-1 defeat against UCD on Friday was only the club’s second home defeat this season and Mahon feels the room for error is all but gone at this stage as he targets a minimum of 51 points to hopefully secure a promotion play-off position.

‘I think we are going to need possibly 30-33 points from the remaining games, that should be enough to see us finish in the top three, ultimately I think 50-51 points will be enough to do that. ‘

After another bright start Drogheda were made pay for a series of missed chances, although Mahon disputes that the penalty which levelled the game was actually a penalty in the first instance.

‘We never recovered from the penalty, which it turns out now was outside the box, we could see the mark of the tackle and it was outside the box. We never really recovered from that and we gave a poor second goal from a very very bad backpass. That’s what happens, we got mugged. This match on Friday is really important for us now.’

While Waterford have shaken things up in personnel, Drogheda have done similarly. Despite being handed a first start of the season on Friday, Joe Jackson has been released with Mahon saying the big defender just didn’t show enough for him to be kept on. Aaron Molloy has left to go stateside while Eoin Kirwan has also been released and Niall Cooney is taking a step back from the game.

Currently training at the club are two former Athlone Town players in the shape of Marco Chindea and Kevin Farragher.

Chindea was a highly rated prospect at St Patricks Athletic and the winger had scored four goals for Athlone this season before opting to leave.

Farragher will be no stranger to Mahon as the duo were together at Malahdide United in 2015 before Farragher joined Athlone.

‘We hope to have the finance in place to get things sewn up soon, we won’t have them for this Friday but hopefully the week after. When the time comes we hope to have a few more also,’ he added.

Long-term injury Colm Deasy is the only injury worry heading into Friday night’s crucial fixture, kick-off at United Park is 7:45.