'We can't look elsewhere' - Derry City ready for must-win game against UCD

Derry City vs. UCD

Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium

Tonight, 7:45pm

Ruaidhri Higgins admits he has never quite seen a league season like this one as Derry City head into a must-win game against UCD still alive in the title race.

In the past week alone, both Derry and St. Patrick’s Athletic have failed to take advantage of a very unexpected slip-up by Shamrock Rovers, who dropped points at UCD at the Belfield Bowl last Friday. The result may have shocked many, but not the Derry City manager, who has his players on guard against a repeat from already-relegated opponents at the Brandywell tomorrow night.

“I’ve never seen the points spread around as much in my life and I’ve been in and around the league since the summer of 2004,” he claimed.

“If you look from third bottom to second place, normally the gap in points is massive, but it’s not this year, and it’s crazy. I remember saying at the start of the year that it would be a season like this. There are a lot of teams who have done well. There are no real surprises anymore; obviously UCD getting a point from Shamrock Rovers opened everyone’s eyes up. It’s been a league that has been like no other than I’ve ever been involved with.”

Last week’s defeat at Sligo Rovers has left Derry City with absolutely no room for error in their remaining games. The champions host in-form Shelbourne at Tallaght tonight, but Higgins only cares about what happens at the Brandywell.

“It's a game we need to win, there's no getting away from it,” he acknowledged. “We have to get the points on the board. We saw with UCD last week and their performance and their result against Shamrock Rovers, so we have to be ready, and try and take the three points and make sure we improve on last week's performance which you'd have to say is a one-off over the last couple of months. We need to get back to performing the way that we were previously.”

“There's loads of football but we can't look elsewhere. We can't look at the fixtures beyond this one. We just need to focus on Friday night and picking up three points and that's the objective. That's what we've been working towards all week and let's see if we can go and get it done against a team that will obviously full of confidence after last week.”

Shane McEleney returns from suspension tonight, but Ronan Boyce misses out due to his red card at the Showgrounds, while Mark Connolly continues to struggle with injury. Higgins is hoping that his players can get the defeat at Sligo out of their systems and get back to scoring goals, to avoid a repeat of the controversial decisions which cost them a win at Sligo last week.

“It's the first league defeat in a while and everyone's hurting and the only way you can respond to that is getting back on the horse and being positive,” he said. “We're at home in front of our own supporters and our home form has been good for the last few months. We need to continue that and try to be ruthless here at home and win the game and get the points on the board.

“Previously, we were scoring a bucket load of goals. Against Rovers, are there ever loads of chances in those types of games, no, but we had the better of them we had the more clear-cut chances. Last week we huffed and puffed we had a few half chances and one good chance and obviously we had a stone wall penalty turned down as well.

“You need those decisions to go for you; the decision and the performance are two different arguments. We came off the standards we recently set but there's no doubt a couple key decisions went against us as well.”