No let-up for Drogheda as Longford come to town
AFTER taking seven points out of nine in their last three home ties against three of the likely promotion contenders, the run of difficult home league games continues for Drogheda United with the visit of Longford Town this Friday (7.45pm).
It’s a measure of how tight the fiercely competitive First Division is that the Boynesiders - currently top of the table - could find themselves down in fourth if they taste defeat on their own patch for the first time in 2018.
‘I’ve watched Longford two or three times this year and we know it’s going to be a really tough game against a good footballing team,’ said Clancy, speaking on Monday afternoon.
‘We would have had them in the mix at the start of the season and they’ve had a good start as well. They’ll be thinking ‘if we win we’ll go ahead of them’.’
Clancy was wary of singling out former Drogs striker Chris Mulhall who made a big impact during his spell at United Park last year and has already netted five times in the league this term, with another former player, Shane Elworthy, among the scorers in their 3-0 victory over Cabinteely last Saturday.
‘Chris is scoring a lot of goals, but there are a lot of players in that team who are very good and you can’t base your game on one player or others might punish you,’ Clancy responded.
‘We did a lot of work on UCD [last Friday] and a lot of it was about the strength of Max [Kougoun] at both ends of the field, and in the end he didn’t play!
‘Neale Fenn has Longford playing good football and we have to come up with something that can counteract that.
‘If we sit off them and let them have the ball they will punish you and that’s for me and Kevin [Doherty] to put the work in on the training ground, to get the lads to play the way we want them to play.
‘But the players are the ones who are winning games and they’ve been unbelievable so far.’
Friday night’s goals from Gareth McCaffrey and Lee Duffy took Drogheda’s tally for the season to 22 from six games, but Clancy discounted the theory that other teams might become overly cautious and try to shut up shop when facing the Boynesiders.
‘I don’t think any team would stray from their own game plan to nullify ours,’ the manager responded.
‘If you’re going to work on something for five days in response to what we’ve been doing for three months, that’s going to be a big difference.
‘But teams will do certain things in regards to playing against us, and we will be doing the same.’
Clancy was expecting to make significant changes for the visit of St Mochta’s in the EA Sports Cup first round last night (Monday, result not available at the time of going to press), but the side to face Longford Town will be similar to the one that defeated UCD 2-0 last week.
Colm Deasy is now free from suspension and Chris Lyons should see action at some stage after not featuring against the Students as he recovers from a hamstring injury.
However, Luke Rossiter remains unavailable to Clancy while the club continue to investigate issues surrounding his tweet relating to the Belfast rape case.
‘The club released a strong statement and I thought it was a brilliant statement,’ Clancy said.
‘There’s still an investigation going on, but for as long as I’m told he won’t be playing and he is not even training at the moment. I will go by what the club decide to do.
‘I think the best thing [about last Friday] was probably the reaction from the Cabinteely game and the disappointment of losing our first game of the season.
‘They were top of the league and it was a huge game and I think it was a brilliant performance all round from us and I think it showed that there’s very little between all the teams.
‘Although we scored two great goals we had to defend as well and they had a few chances, but Skins [Paul Skinner] made a few great saves and a few great catches from crosses and corners.’
Lesser teams might have been distracted by the fallout from the controversial Luke Rossiter tweet which led to last week’s public apology from the young player, but Clancy insisted he had no worries on that score.
‘Not at all,’ he responded.
‘It would have been an easy cop-out to say that affected us, but it was never mentioned in the build-up and we were just under par on the night [against Cabinteely] and it was probably a wake-up call for us. It showed that we need to be at it all the time.’
‘If we sit off them and let them have the ball they will punish you and that’s for me and Kevin [Doherty] to put the work in on the training ground, to get the lads to play the way we want them to play. But the players are the ones who are winning games and they’ve been unbelievable so far.’