League Preview: Bray Wanderers -v- Galway United
John Caulfield & Ollie Horgan Credit: Paul Dolan (ETPhotos)
BRAY WANDERERS
Bray Wanderers gave themselves a lifeline in their quest for one of the promotion-play off places in the First Division when they made the long trip to Tralee last weekend and came away with a deserved 3-1 win over Kerry.
The Seagulls have won only eight league games all season however, a 27% win ratio, hardly the form which gives confidence that they can extend their season beyond their last scheduled league game at home to Finn Harps at the end of October.
They currently occupy seventh place in the league table, albeit that they two teams they will be trying to pass on the home straight, Wexford and Longford Town, are only four and two points better off respectively.
The games don’t come any tougher than the one they face in the Carlisle Grounds this Friday night, as runaway leader Galway Utd arrive in the seaside town for game 30 in the 36-game series.
Manager Ian Ryan spoke to the Wanderers media team this week where he said “It doesn’t matter who the opposition is. There are seven games left. It’s a massive game for us. Given Galway are the runaway leaders, the next one is always the hardest”
“We are coming off a good win away in Kerry. We showed we can match Galway in the draw at the Carlisle earlier this season. And we’ll be out to win this game. It’s important we play with an authority and a belief that we’re going to win the game.”
He then added “The performance last week was good. We got players on the scoresheet. We’ll take the confidence from that and go into this game with the right belief. And the remaining six (games) after that. Within this group, we have the strong belief that we’re going to achieve what we want to archive. And how we get there will take its course over the next couple of weeks.”
In team news Jack Hudson is expected to be available after a bout of illness, but Yoyo Mahdy, David Webster and Guillermo Almirall are all on the doubtful list.
GALWAY UNITED
Galway United are a whopping 15 points ahead of second placed Waterford and are as good as guaranteed the automatic promotion spot back to the Premier Division next season even with seven games left to play.
They have only been beaten twice all season with the most recent reverse being a surprising 1-0 loss away to Longford Town last Saturday.
That result certainly was an outlier as they have been utterly dominant since the start of the season, winning 23 of their 29 games and amassing 73 points.
Seven more points will win the league for John Caulfield’s men and they will be hoping that will be down to four points when they board the bus home at 10.30 pm next Friday night.
Caulfield spoke to Galway Bay FM during the week and he said: “When we drew 1-1 (with Bray) in June we rode our luck a bit on that occasion.
They also had a good win down in Kerry and they were only narrowly beaten by Dundalk in the last round of the cup, so they have talented players, we are well aware of that’’
“Our lads have been great all season, and if we play to our full potential, we believe we can park what happened last weekend and go on to take the three points in Bray.
“We have prepared all week for the Bray match and apart from a few injuries we have a very strong squad to select from.”
Referee: Paul Norton
MATCH STATS
Bray Wanderers have conceded 10 goals and only scored once in the three previous games against Galway United this season, hardly a good omen for the fourth and final clash this weekend.
The biggest defeat was the 6-0 thrashing in Galway in April, although on their second trip there in July they were also well beaten 3-0.
They did buck that trend somewhat at home in the June fixture, a result that will give them some degree of hope on Friday night.
David Hurley scored early for Galway in that game, in the 8th minute, however Bray did well to recover when Chris Lyons scored an equaliser in the 50th minute leaving it a 1-1 and a sharing of the points.
PREDICTION
Bray Wanderers 0-2 Galway United
Bray Wanderers
Injured: None
Doubtful: Yoyo Mahdy, David Webster, Guillermo Almirall
Suspended: None
Galway United
Injured: Colm Horgan, Ronan Manning, Conor O’Keeffe
Doubtful: Regan Donelon.
Suspended: None
