Derry City boss Ruaidhrí Higgins wants his players to continue their good home form as they prepare to face lowly Dundalk, at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium tonight.
The Candystripes, fresh from their scoreless draw at leaders Shelbourne on Monday, know a victory would move them into pole position and the Limavady man admits he doesn’t know how long they’ll remain at the top of the summit.
“Our home form has been good,” he stated. “We’re scoring goals at home and you’re right, a win takes you top of the table for how long, God only knows, but it might only be for 24 hours, but that’s the incentive.
“But there’s still 10 games to go and if we’re putting top of the table with 3 or 4 to go then I would absolutely snap your hand off for that, but we’ve got to be trying to pick up as many wins now as possible starting here at home on Friday.
“Over the last eight weeks our form has been good. We have scored a lot of goals.
“If you take away that one performance in Europe away from home, our form has been really good and we’ve been quite clinical and I thought the first half hour the other night was domination from us.
“We were outstanding and could have been two in front, but the way they adapted, what happened, the game, real credit to them.
“The players are in good spirits, good form and we’ve a good record at home so we need to try and keep that going on Friday.”
Dundalk travel to the Maiden City in terrible form, having lost four of their last eight games domestically and sit just two points above bottom side Drogheda United. Nevertheless, Higgins is wary of his former club.
The 39-year-old believes the Premier Division is very competitive and everyone in the league has something to play for, whether it’s for the title, to secure European football for next season or to avoid the drop.
“No matter who we come up against over the next number of weeks, I think everybody in the league has something to play for, so aye it’s something to really look forward to,” he explained.
“Dundalk obviously lost against Galway but I was at their game the previous week away to Bohemians and they drew one each and they were really good, particularly in the second half.
“We know Dalymount is a tough place to go to and they got a deserved point down there, so if we take our eye off the ball it’s a real dangerous one but if we continue the type of form that we’ve shown for the majority of the last six to eight weeks, I think we’ve given ourselves a good chance.
“Some of the play here at home has been outstanding. We’ll come to the Brandywell on Friday and try and put on a good performance and reward our supporters for sticking by us and keeping going.
“You look at the numbers on a Monday, it wasn’t a bank holiday here, it was a bank holiday down south and the numbers that we took on a Monday night was brilliant and they stuck right with us and they really drove the players on when we were getting tired so fair play to them.”
City have a few injury concerns going into this evening’s clash with defenders Ronan Boyce and Shane McEleney both struggling, while centre-back Sam Todd misses out through suspension.
