Boss mindful of Lamont

The Drumahoe club host United at the Riverside Stadium (KO 7.45pm) and Kee is planning to do some work on the training ground this week just to ensure they don’t give the front man time in space.

Last season Lamont tormented ’Stute and also scored on a few occasions and because of that the Institute boss is making special plans for him.

“Lamont is a threat and he can score goals, he scored goals against us, so we have to pay him definitely extra attention on Friday,” he admitted.

“I’m sure they have retained most of last year’s squad and have added a couple of other players to strengthen their squad. They deserve a lot of credit last season because any time we played them they were a very competitive opponent and I’m sure Friday night will be no different.

“There is no question our defending has to be a whole lot better and that is something we are going to have to address in the next couple of matches.

“However I’m not going to knock the players after the Carrick game because they stuck at it and they were resilient.

“I feel we need to defend better as a team and deny space, so that means working hard up front, then in midfield, then in defence and then our keeper has to do well. In fairness Alan Ryan made four significant saves in the second half, but he’s capable of doing that.

“It’s good that we have him here at the minute as we can use him before he goes back to England, the plan is to keep him signed and if we ever did have a keeper problem we could just bring him back, but when he goes both Corey (Wilson) and Marty (Gallagher) will be fighting it out.”

The Waterside man is also looking to make Drumahoe some what of fortress this campaign.

“You want to try and win every game it doesn’t matter if it’s home or away.

“But on Friday night we really want to win as it’s our first home game of the season and we want to make sure Drumahoe is a hard place for sides to come to.

“However because it’s still early and with every team still fresh and looking forward to the challenge and Tobermore will be no different.”

’Stute should welcome back trio Joe Gray, John Curran and Sean McCarron for this week’s game.

“John has been away for two weeks on holiday but I’m sure he has been sensible and done some type of physical activity, because he has invested a lot of time in his fitness during the break, so there is no point in him wasting all that.

“Hopefully Joe and Sean will also be available and Graham’s (Crown) injury is coming along well, so that will maybe give us four new players to add to the squad.”

Kee believes there could be a special atmosphere because the game will be played under the lights at Drumahoe.

“There is always a nice feeling when night matches take place at Drumahoe, hopefully by towards the end of the game there will be a nice dew, which will mean the pitch will be slick and hopefully we can give a good account of ourselves.

“We will be definitely preparing for the game as best we can, starting from last night at training.”