Gary Hamilton will have virtually a full squad to picked for Monday night’s televised visit of Cliftonville.
The Glenavon manager will still be without Calum Birney and the suspended Sean Ward for the game (7.45pm kick-off, live on Sky Sports Football) but other than that Gary reports no other concerns.
The Reds come into the game sitting in fifth place in the Danske Bank Premiership, but have lost four of their last five league games – a 5-0 thrashing of Portadown the exception to losses to Dungannon, Larne, Ballymena United and Linfield.
“They’ve been a bit like ourselves,” Gary told the club website. “Obviously they’ve got quality within their squad but it’s hard to compete against the top teams financially and they are in the same predicament as ourselves.
“Linfield, Larne, Glentoran and Crusaders are streets ahead of us both financially and there’s a wee group of ourselves, Coleraine, Ballymena.
“The one thing that Cliftonville have is a player capable of scoring 30-40 goals a season in Joe Gormley. It’s hard to get people like that but Joe’s a Cliftonville man through and through and they’ve benefitted from that. It’s a big strength for them.
“There’s not much between the teams and whoever turns up on the night will be the team which gets the result.”
While results in two of Glenavon’s last three games have not gone their way, they have performed well in each of those games and Gary hopes that can be carried through to Monday night.
“Hopefully we can bring the same level of performance,” he said.
“There’s no point in playing well against Larne, Linfield and Crusaders and then playing Cliftonville tomorrow and not giving the same level of performance.
“If we keep playing the way we are playing we will start getting results and our luck will start changing. But if we pick and choose our matches in terms of who we lift ourselves for then that’s not good enough – we have to be able to do that for tomorrow night’s game.”
LAST TIME OUT: Cliftonville 1-0 Glenavon – A single goal scored in the 45th minute on New Year’s Day 2020 by Reds substitute Thomas Maguire was all that separated the sides at the final whistle.
MATCH OFFICIALS
REFEREE: Tony Clarke
ASSISTANT REFEREES: Kristian Hanna, Neil Gillespie
FOURTH OFFICIAL: Christopher Morrison
SPONSORS
MATCH SPONSOR: William Walker GSC
BALL SPONSOR: Tandragee Sewing Machines
MAN OF THE MATCH SPONSOR: Richard Johnson/Ian Henderson
