Monaghan United vs Sporting Fingal

• Gareth Penrose
• Thu, Sep 04 2008




Monaghan United welcome Sporting Fingal to Kingspan Century Park on Friday night as Fingal look to continue their push for promotion in their maiden season. (Kick-off 20:00).

Monaghan have won 4 out of their last 5 league games, and will be looking to continue their run of form. Manager Mick Cooke was pleased with their latest result over Longford, winning 3-1 away from home.

“I was very pleased with our win away to Longford, the margin of victory didn’t flatter us, we could have doubled our take of three goals on the night and I felt they were very fortunate in scoring their goal.”

“This is the form at least that we will have replicate to beat Fingal”

Monaghan will probably still be without Brendan Kennedy and David Scully out through injury but otherwise Mick Scully will have a full squad to pick from.

Last week’s win over Shelbourne was Sporting Fingal’s first victory in four league matches and they will aim to build on that result.

Sporting moved level with third-placed Shels on 46 points as a result of last Friday’s win, three points adrift of Waterford who are two points off leaders Dundalk.

Brian Kelly, Jim Crawford and John Frost, who were missing last week due to injury, returned to training in midweek and may feature should they prove their fitness.

Liam Buckley will give opponents Monaghan due respect but is focussed on getting the points to keep matters tight at the top of the First Division table.

“We want to take things on from last weekend’s result against Shels. The group of players showed great character to come from behind and beat one of the title contenders,” he said.

“Consistency is required from us during the remaining matches of the campaign. Bearing in mind that Monaghan turned us over on our last visit, we’ll have to apply ourselves properly to get the desired result.”

Extratime Prediction: Fingal are bookies favourites at 11-10, with Mons at 2-1 and a draw 9-4. Despite these odds, Form will not be on Fingal’s side however, having not lost a game this season at home, have lost five on their travels. We think that this game is likely to end in a low scoring draw, 1-1.