Irish Premiership: Linfield v Cliftonville (tonight, Windsor Par, live on live on BBC2 NI)
PACE-setters Cliftonville face the acid-test of their Premiership ambitions with a trip across the city to face reigning champions Linfield at their Windsor Park home tonight.
The third-in-the-table Blues trail the Reds by five points but David Healy’s side has a game in hand and warmed up for the top of-the-table battle with a 3-0 win over Glentoran.
Cliftonville made it five wins from six games (a draw with Crusaders is their only slip-up so far) with a 1-0 win against Warrenpoint Town last weekend - Ryan Curran continued his bright start to the season with his third goal of this campaign.
Christy Mazinga has topped the Blues’ scoring charts with five goals but the Congo U20 international is suspended for tonight’s clash. That is a bonus for the Reds but goals from Matt Green, Trai Hume and Cameron Palmer made light of his absence at the Oval on Tuesday night.
“It could be a positive for us that he’s missing but at the same time they have a great squad and they have other players who can come in and do just as good a job,” said Cliftonville skipper Chris Curran.
“We’ll be confident, but not over-confident, and we’re looking forward to the game. I think it will be a good test and it’s a chance for us to pit ourselves against the champions and the best team in the league so I think we’ll have a good idea of where we are after the game.
“We were disappointed not to get into Europe but it meant that we could have a really good rest and then a really good pre-season so I think that helped us. The signings that Paddy has made have improved us and apart from that it has just been hard work, good performances and we have been well organised and we’ve had a bit of luck.
“So we’ve made a good start but we’ll not be getting ahead of ourselves.”
Linfield won three of last year’s four league meetings with Cliftonville while the Reds won the other game 4-3 at Solitude. Victory tonight will see Paddy McLaughlin’s men open up an eight-point lead over the reigning champions and the chatter over their league-winning potential will grow louder should that happen.
“Paddy always talks about breaking down the season into sections and we try to take it month by month,” said Curran.
“We try and pick up as many points from each month as we possibly can but personally I think our aim should be getting into Europe. I don’t think that we have gone into this season expecting to win a league title – I don’t think we’re there yet.
“We’ve made really good starts to the league before – a couple of years’ ago we were top of the table at Christmas but then we fell away. I’m more concerned with finishing the season strongly than the start that we’ve made although it is positive. I’ll be much more pleased if we finish the season strongly.”
