Ferguson to put faith in United players for Seaview trip

The Sky Blues boss has upwards of half a dozen players available for selection after suspension and injury for the trip to Seaview but admits he is unlikely to change the line-up who shocked the league champions.

“I wouldn’t call it a selection headache,” Ferguson told Times Sport.

“The opportunity is there for all of the players because we have maintained that if they’re fit enough and playing in the team, doing well and getting results, they’ll stay in the team – that’s the bottom line.

“You look at it realistically, our bench against Linfield was very young. A couple of them have been in and around the first team but who haven’t played an awful lot and one who hadn’t been involved in the first team so that may change if we have to go for a bit of strength in depth.

“But the 11 who started – why should they not start again this week? They’ve proved they can do a job against the best team in the league.

“It’s another difficult game this week so we have to keep that level of performance again.

“No matter who beats Linfield, the next week that team is under massive pressure to go and perform like that again, no matter who they’re playing.

“You don’t get six or seven points for beating Linfield – you get three like everyone else so it’s only one result.

“I told the players before they got too cock-a-hoop in the changing room that there’s no point in beating Linfield one week and then going out the next week against whoever and not performing.

“We will try to ensure that doesn’t happen against arguably the next best team in the country in Crusaders.

“We’re not bothered what other players, managers or supporters think – we have our own agenda as such of how we want to compete and what our targets are for the season.

“We’ve already proved that if the players do what we want them to do, they can get results and those targets can be achieved.

“When the fixtures came out we said that will give us a gauge as to how far we’ve come.

“The last nine or 10 games of last season were against teams in the bottom six and we picked up a lot of points but the next stage was can we maintain that over the summer and into the new season.

“People maybe said when the fixtures came out that Ballymena would struggle for points in their first two games so we’re three up already on what a lot of people had maybe predicted for us,” added Ferguson.

The manager has Chris Rodgers, Tony Kane and Gary Thompson available after suspension, along with Mark Surgenor, who was best man at a wedding, while Alan Davidson and Ross Black are expected to overcome knocks to be available for selection.

That just leaves Gavin Taggart – who completes a two-game ban carried over from last season – and long-term injury victims Denver Gage and Neil Lowry on the sidelines.