Preview: Wexford Youths vs Waterford Utd

Wexford Youths will entertain Waterford United at Ferrycarraig Park on Friday March the 7th with an 8pm kick-off. This will be only the second time these two teams have met on a competitive basis, with Waterford knocking Mick Wallace’s men out of the League of Ireland cup by a scoreline of 3-0 last year. Wallace’s men have come a long way since then as there rollercoaster of a debut season last year will give them much needed experience for the new campaign ahead.

Waterford on the other hand will be hoping to bounce straight back into top flight football as their dismal season in the Eircom Premier League resulted in them losing the end of season play-off and therefore being relegated.

Waterford have strengthened their team during the pre-season with manager Gareth Cronin signing some experienced players. Luke Fitzpatrick and Michael Foley have all been added to the team from St. Patricks Athletic, Stephen Quigley from Dundalk and Kevin Waters from Limerick while he has also signed the experienced and hard tackling Robbie Clarke from Shamrock Rovers. It’s obvious what Cronin felt the problem was last year, conceding goals, as he has signed plenty of defenders to try and solve the problem. Also Michael Foley will be a great addition to the squad. The ex-Liverpool player is talented on the ball and also a precise passer of the ball; he will be a great link up player from receiving the ball from the backline and supply the strikers with key passes.

Wallace on the other hand has a different approach when adding to his already vast squad. He usually tends to go for his list of home grown talent, meaning players from Wexford who have represented him at different age levels through out the club, but this year he has changed that and signed one or two experienced players from outside the county as well. This change of signing players will be very interesting to see how it progresses. The nucleus of the team is the same as last season, but there has been the addition of former Manchester City defender Paul Murphy, although it looks like Wallace is going to play him as a striker. Murphy had a trail during the pre-season and impressed and with his pedigree he is bound to make the team stronger. Murphy has signed from St. Patrick’s Athletic. Wallace has added two other players to the team in Willie Doyle from Monaghan and Ricky Fox from Shamrock Rovers. Also Wallace as we all know already is a huge fan of putting his faith in the younger generation of the club and this year will be no different as players like Kyle Dempsey and Paul Rossiter will surely get more chances this season after impressive cameos last year and during pre-season.

Coming into the game Wexford will basically have a full squad to choose from as Wallace and Pat Dolan will ring the changes again after experimenting with different players throughout there pre-season. They should stick to the same counter attacking formation of 3-5-2, with attacking wing-backs, so they’ll give Waterford a game and won’t be fazed by them having more experienced players. Especially since in there last friendly they got a creditable 0-0 result against Shamrock Rovers.

Waterford on the other hand will hope to give some new arrivals debuts, but they also have a list of suspensions with Robbie Clarke and Vinny Sullivan set to miss out on the opening game of the season as their suspensions have carried on from last season.

This game should be an epic battle and could be a great opener for the new exciting eircom First Division season.