Championship 1: Institute v Larne preview

Four games in to the Championship 1 season, the Inver Reds find themselves at the wrong end of the table and now the manager is demanding his team get some crucial points on the board.

“It’s obviously vitally important we get some useful points on the board in the league because, even though we are only four matches into the campaign, there’s a danger people will soon be getting a little bit nervous when they look at the table and see us sitting near the bottom – and we can do without that!

“We will be going flat-out to beat what is an ambitious Institute side. We have a game in hand over most of the teams above us and three points on Friday night would, potentially, move us up three places in the table.

“I accept a few are perhaps a little bit better than the rest, but all the teams in this division are much of a muchness in this division, and it’s therefore down to belief and hunger and how you perform on a given day as to which will get the result in a particular game.”

He added: “I will admit that I don’t know very much about the Institute team but, not for the first time, I will be stressing that it’s all down to getting our own performance right on the night.

“We are knocking the ball about and opportunities are being created, so we must make sure to take them when they come our way. If we do that I feel we can get a win at Drumahoe.

“We have no suspensions to worry about but there is a slight concern about Andy Simms. He was injured on Saturday and didn’t train on Monday because of a dead leg. But we will hopefully have him available. And, on the plus side, Liam Carland is available for the first time.”

Institute’s assistant manager, Paul Carlyle, is hoping the north-west side can maintain their solid start to the season.

“We want to keep a run going in the league, get as many points as we can, because winning matches breeds confidence,” he said.

“We have had Iam McFaul doing a bit of work for us this year and he went and watched Larne recently, so we have a report on them, so we know what to expect.”

He added: “Although we aren’t scoring as many goals as I would like, we are creating the chances and I thought we had addressed that problem, because we have signed enough attack-minded players.

“You would like to think we’ll get a bit of a crowd and anyone who comes out will see us trying to play good football.”