Danske Bank Premiership: Cliftonville v Linfield (tonight, 7.45pm, live on Sky Sports Football)
CLIFTONVILLE manager Paddy McLaughlin says it was always the plan to have both Ruaidhrí Donnelly and new signing Michael McCrudden available as striking options at Solitude, although neither is likely to be available to start tonight’s clash with Linfield.
Despite intense speculation linking Donnelly to Larne, and reports that he had already put pen to paper on an agreement with east Antrim’s big spenders, the one-time Swansea striker decided to stay put at Cliftonville in the aftermath of their signing of highly-rated Derry City forward McCrudden. However, with McCrudden struggling for match fitness and Donnelly still recovering from ligament damage sustained before Christmas, both are likely to watch tonight’s top of the table tie from the sidelines.
“We always knew deep down that Ruaidhrí’s a Cliftonville man,” said McLaughlin yesterday.
“He’s Cliftonville through-and-through and we always knew where his heart lay. When good players are running low on their contracts - there wasn’t too long left on his contract – there’s always going to be an interest in him.
“It’d be an insult to the player if there was no interest in him, so we knew there was always going to be interest in him, but we were always confident in him staying and we know that he lives and breathes Cliftonville and that he loves nothing more than playing and hopefully scoring plenty of goals for Cliftonville in the future.”
Joe Gormley has been playing with a hamstring injury in recent weeks and is likely to be strapped up and sent into battle again tonight in a game McLaughlin insists is worth no more than any other in the Danske Bank Premiership.
“It’s a big game surely, it’s against one of our rivals, but there’ll be plenty of them along the way between now and the end of the season,” McLaughlin added.
“It’s three points like any other game, beating somebody in the bottom six is just as valuable as beating somebody in the top six, they’re all tough games. We need to be at our best to get a result because we expect a reaction from Linfield,” he said, referring to the Blues’ shock Irish Cup exit to Queen’s University.
“They’ve probably faced a bit of criticism over the week from getting put out of the Irish Cup, which they would have been strongly fancied to go on and win. Their pride has taken a bit of a battering, but they’re a good side, they’re full of good players and David Healy is a brilliant manager and he’s proved that over the last couple of years by winning trophies on a regular basis, so we don’t expect anything other than a tough game.
“But the good thing about it is we’re going into it in a rich vein of form – the players’ confidence is sky high at the minute and, when we trained on Saturday morning, the boys were champing at the bit to get started.”
Tonight is the beginning of a massive fortnight for Cliftonville, during which they also travel to face fellow title contenders Coleraine and take on Ballymena in the County Antrim Shield final. Having watched his players negotiate a tricky December fixture list with aplomb, McLaughlin is confident they can go again this month.
“We always believe that we can come through any game and any month,” he added.
“We’re going into a big month, but we came through the month of December with flying colours, so the more you challenge these boys the better they respond. They proved that in December, so the challenge is for them to respond again.
“It’ll be just as tough, it’ll need just as much effort and work-rate and quality in our play, but every time you challenge these boys, they come back with answers. Hopefully, they can do it again.”
