Irish Premiership:
LINFIELD, Crusaders and Cliftonville (second, third and fourth in the table respectively and locked together on 36 points - all meet teams from the bottom four in today’s Irish League schedule (all 3pm).
On paper, the Crues have the toughest task – they travel to Mourneview to meet Gary Hamilton’s Glenavon, while Cliftonville host basement side Portadown and David Healy’s Blues welcome second-from-bottom Dungannon Swifts to Windsor Park.
The Swifts went nine games without a win – a horror run that included eight losses and a 1-1 home draw against Ballymena with 25 goals conceded and just three scored – before Rhys Campbell netted the winner against Glenavon in late November.
A 2-0 loss at Coleraine followed, but Dungannon bounced back with a season’s-best 4-1 win against Carrick last Saturday and manager Dean Shiels says the upturn in results is reward for some good performances.
“We’ve been playing well but we came through a tough period,” said Shiels.
“After tomorrow, we’ll be the only team in the league that has played all of the top six twice. So we’ve had a tough run but we were putting in really good performances and there were signs coming that we were starting to play really well and recently we’ve got wins to go with the performances.
“So we’re in a good place, there’s confidence and belief there and hopefully we can kick on.”
The Swifts travelled to Larne twice in the space of 10 days and hosted Cliftonville in between so there is certainly truth in what Shiels says.
But the challenges keep coming with this afternoon’s visit to Windsor.
“It’s easy to roll over when results aren’t going your way but we should have beaten Larne, we should have beaten Glentoran,” said Shiels.
“We missed chances and chances but that added to the belief of the players. They knew we were creating chances and playing well and they had to keep believing in the process and the results would come and they did.
“Linfield are in a really good spell at the moment and it’s just our luck that we’re getting them when they’re at the top of their game. It’s never easy to go to the National Stadium but we’ll go with no fear and we have nothing to lose. We have to demand the standards that we have been putting in recently and believe that we can get something there, that’s our mentality now.”
Meanwhile, Cliftonville could move up to second if they beat Portadown and the Swifts can take points off The Blues. The Reds had been on an eight-game unbeaten run before they came unstuck against Ballymena United on December 3. The Sky Blues led 1-0 at the break and three second half goals meant Ronan Hale’s late strike was nothing more than a consolation.
Hale found the net again against Coleraine in the League Cup semi-final last time out but the game finished 2-2 after extra-time and the Bannsiders went through to the final thanks to a 5-4 win in the penalty shoot-out.
Elsewhere, Glenavon host a Crusaders side that lost 2-0 at Coleraine last weekend. Glenavon have lost three of their last four and need victory to open a five-point gap between themselves and Newry City.
