DERRY City’s Paul McMullan disagrees with people who think this season’s SSE Airtricity League Premier Division is crazy, as he feels it’s a very good division.
With no one team being able to dominate things and everyone beating each other, the Scottish winger feels that is good for League of Ireland football.
The Candystripes entertain Bohemians tomorrow night and McMullan hopes the Foylesiders can pick up maximum points.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a crazy league, I would say it’s a good league,” he insisted.
“It’s a league where the teams that people class as the bottom-half teams are good teams and if you don’t show them respect you get beat.
“As for Bohs, they’ve been going well and it’s going to be another difficult game. We’ve had to recover all week since the Shelbourne game on Monday night and now it’s all about seeing what Friday brings against Bohemians.”
Derry missed the chance to move into top spot after drawing with leaders Shelbourne on Monday and they also failed to fully capitalise on Shamrock Rovers’ shock home loss to Waterford.
While McMullan was frustrated that Sean Boyd earned Damien Duff’s men a point with his 90th-minute equaliser, he was also quick to point out that results elsewhere doesn’t matter, especially as there are still over 20 league games remaining.
“I’ve said it before at this stage of the season you just want to try and put as many points on the board as possible, then when you get to the last seven or eight games you can start looking at other teams’ results and then start to think about trying to capitalise, but there’s still a long way to go,” he explained.
“We play St Pat’s and (Shamrock) Rovers on Friday and Monday in a few weeks’ time, those games are going to be important, especially as both are away from home, but as I said the way that the league is can only be good.
“It’s a good competitive league and everybody is going to take points and I wouldn’t be looking too far ahead and seeing who’s top at the minute, as there’s a long way to go.”
Midfielder Sadou Diallo came off the bench on Monday night and made his first appearance of the season and with Cameron Dummigan, Patrick McEleney and Michael Duffy also on the road to recovery, the 28-year-old believes the returning players will give the squad a boost.
“It’s been the same 12/14 guys who’ve been slugging it out for the last four or five weeks,” he added.
“It’s been a lot of games, we’ve had a lot of minutes in our legs and the boys are giving everything, so it will be refreshing to see some of the other lads coming back and sharing a wee bit of the work-load and hopefully they’ll bring a freshness to the side.”
The former Dundee United man was delighted to have finally scored for Ruaidhrí Higgins’ side at the 35th time of asking and he now hopes that goal is the first of many.
“I think someone was saying that I must have the worst strike rate for a forward in Derry’s history,” he joked. “But yeah I’m delighted to have got my goal.
“I just saw that their keeper (Conor Kearns) was out and I just tried to put it back across to the other side and thankfully it found the bottom corner and it gave everyone a wee lift.
“I thought it was going to get us the three points, but unfortunately it didn’t.
I feel a lot fitter than compared to last year and this season I’ve played in a lot of areas, but I’m just trying to fill in as much as I can and wherever I’m asked to play, but to be honest it doesn’t really bother me where I’m asked to play, I’m just going to give it everything I’ve got.”
