Bluebell United v Derry City, Brandywell, 7.45pm
City may have been drawn away from home against Bluebell United but the Leinster side surrendered home advantage to the Candystripes and thus will travel to the Brandywell tomorrow night to face the Candystripes in the fourth round of the Ford FAI Cup.
The Candystripes have experienced a disappointing run of home defeats in recent times and will keen to record a positive performance and result in front of the Brandywell faithful.
Indeed the Candystripes have crashed out of the EA Sports Cup and also seen their League title challenge shudder to a halt with successive defeats to Dundalk, Sligo and Drogheda. Manager Devine has been keen to defend his players and admitted in the run up to this game that “obviously the performance[against Drogheda United] was not acceptable by Derry City standards”.
The manager has been keen his defend his young squad and pointed out ”no-one is more disappointed than myself when we lose but we are a young, emerging team and we are going to make mistakes”. However failure to advance pass the non league side from Dublin would be a major shock and Devine and the players will be keen to secure a place in the quarter finals of the 2013 edition of the tournament.
City, the cup holders, started their campaign against Blarney United in early June and cruised to a comfortable 4-0 win away from home. Bluebell pulled off one of the major surprises of the last when they toppled high flying Athlone Town after a replay and Devine will be aware that the junior side will regard his side as one of the biggest scalps they may ever achieve.
The manager has a number of injury of concerns with Greacen and Deery long term injury victims. There are also serious concerns over the fitness of Patrick McEleney, Ryan McBride and Michael Duffy. However Dean Jarvis is in line to make the match day squad having recovered from injury
No comments:
Post a Comment