Great results last weekend | Players in | Sligo in the League Cup

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Morning all. It’s been a long week and half now since we’ve had a game and it’s going to be even longer until we get to play at home and even that will only be against UCD! Things have been quiet on the Drogs front over the past week or so, the lads seem to be just working away keeping under the radar and not attracting too much attention. I was thinking about this little second “mid season break” that we’ve had and it might not be as bad as we all think regarding our momentum and performance etc. The reason being is just after us hammering Derry, the pundits were beginning to talk us up a little, which is nice, but it’ll be even nicer if we can still perform and still be written off. Anyway we’ll wait and see what happens after this Sunday as all that could change if we jump to second spot in the table.

From a Drogs point of view we’ve been plodding along nicely. Results last weekend were excellent for us and it leaves the crazy situation that if we beat Pats on Sunday, which I think we can, then we will be sitting nicely in second place and have the potential to be considered a “proper” title rival to Sligo. Now I don’t think for a minute that we can win the league but it would be great if we can challenge them for the majority of the season. Rovers seem to be in freefall at the moment even though they did restore some pride with a draw against Pats, but did lose a soft goal in the last minute. Hopefully their poor form can continue up until we play them so that we can turn them over and stretch our lead over them even further. Kenny is under serious pressure over there, he really needs to turn it around and unless he does then it could be curtains for him in Tallaghtfornia. It’s surprising to see so many of their good players performing so badly, especially Garto. Now I’m a big fan of Garto, he was brilliant for us but a lot of the time his performance was helped by the quality he played with, IE. Jason Gavin and Brian Shelley. I don’t think he has that quality to play alongside at Rovers and as such his performances are suffering. Maybe he needs to play with the Drogs again to regain his form?

Up in Mosney we’ve had confirmation of our new signings now with Alan Byrne, Conor McMahon and Jason Marks coming from the now defunct Mons and goalkeeper Michael Schlingerman from Athlone Town. So far Byrne has played against Craptown in the League cup and performed very well by all accounts. I wonder if that’s why we kept a clean sheet at Derry seeing as the defence now have some stiff competition for places? Also in defence at left back is McMahon who put in a good performance against Derry and is looking like a great replacement for Grimes who is still trying to sort out the doping accusation with the PFAI. Marks is a midfielder who I know nothing about but I’m going to assume that he’s been brought in as backup rather than looking to jump straight into the first team. Mick in his Extratime.ie interview indicated that there might be a couple of departures with some players coming to him and asking what is going to happen. It’ll be interesting to see who might leave. I would presume a midfielder would be the one to go as it’s getting pretty congested in there at the moment so we might see someone moving on before the window closes at the end of the month.

MNS on Monday night didn’t have us in action but we did get to see who we would face in the Semi-Final of the league cup and it was Sligo at home. That was a great draw, not because we can beat them, which we can but because it means that we can drum up some excitement around the town and like I’ve said since the start of the season, the League cup is a trophy that we can win. We can get a big crowd to this game on the Bank Holiday and if we can progress and get the final at United Park then it will be a great achievement for the club in such a short space of time.

In news around the rest of the league, you know when you’ve hit July when League of Ireland fans get excited to see their teams play against farmers and bin men from the Fareo Islands. Pats and Bohs have been in action with Pats being the only team to win, albeit a 1-0 home victory. They are away to Iceland tomorrow so hopefully they’ll be taken all the way to penalties and be knackered for our game on Sunday. Bohs drew 0-0 at home against some team sounding like a Greek God, so hopefully they’ll progress which will give us a little advantage for when we come to play them soon. I’m not excited anymore about League of Ireland teams in Europe as it’s such a distraction from the realities of the problems in the league that we should possibly abstain from entering the competition for a few years until we get our house in order. Currently it’s a complete waste of money travelling to the arse end of Europe or Asia in some cases only to get hammered and spend a fortune. What’s the point?

Anyway that’s a discussion for another day. Also Craptown have officially put their club up for sale. Not exactly a bargain buy you’d find in Penny’s so I can’t see many people scrambling to take over the club. You never know, some crazy oil rich Arab might have delusions of grandeur and buy the club and pump billions into it. I think we can all sleep happily without worrying about that happening!

Right that’s all from me today. I’m been pretty busy this week with moving house with soon to be Mrs Forzadrogs but I should be back to normal now as we’ve finally moved everything. I’ll be back on Friday with a preview of the league’s weekend action and my weekly bet!