Friday night see’s the visit of Derry City to the Carlisle Grounds, kick off 7:45pm in what is our first of 3 home games in a row.
The seagulls welcome back Gary McCabe for Friday evening’s game against Derry City who along with keeper Aaron Dillon (Back Strain) and Paul O Conor, missed the Sligo game.
We will again be without John Sullivan, Aaron Greene, Darragh Noone and Jake Kelly who are all long term absentees while Paul O Conor, Aaron Dillon and Conor Kenna will have late fitness tests.
Paul had a clash of heads in last Friday’s game with Limerick and felt unwell after the game resulting in the doctor ruling him out of the Sligo game. Aaron Dillon had a slight strain in his back from the Limerick game and that also ruled him out of the Sligo match, Conor Kenna picked up a dead leg in the closing stages on Monday against Sligo and we will reassess all 3 players on Friday morning.
Speaking ahead of Friday night’s match, Caretaker manager Graham Kelly said,
“The two defeats last weekend were tough to take as we feel we deserved something from both games, Looking back at the Limerick game I believe we created enough chances to win the game and we were very disappointed to come away with nothing. While defensively we looked a lot better against Limerick we didn’t deal with a long throw in what resulted in Limerick scoring their winning goal. Again away to Sligo on Monday evening where we might not have played as well as previous games I still feel a draw would have been a fair result.
While we are happy that we are creating chances in games we also know we need to be more clinical in front of goal and start putting them away.
Injuries to our more experienced players has been tough on the squad but training this week has been good and the players have responded with a great positive attitude on the training ground, We are all in this together and there is a great team spirit and belief that we have what it takes to start picking up points and take us up the table.”