Bradley hoping Rovers can stay in Europa League

Shamrock Rovers play NK Celje in the return home leg of their third qualifying round tie of the UEFA Europa League on Thursday, August 15.

The tie is finely balanced with Celje holding a slender 1-0 lead from the first leg played last Thursday in Stadion Z’dezele, Celje in Slovenia before a crowd of almost two and a half thousand people.

In that game Celje played with an attacking formation of 3-4-3 while the SSE Airtricity Champions had a more conservative approach with a 3-5-2 formation with Trevor Clarke playing on the left side of midfield.

Kilnamanagh’s Aaron Greene was also playing upfront.

Despite their more conservative formation ‘the Hoops’ had 47% of possession and four shots on target as opposed to Celje’s six shots.

With so much possession several chances fell to the Tallaght side, including a half chance after only 12 seconds, but they were unable to convert.

Interestingly Celje had eight corners while Rovers had none in this, at times, tense affair.

For Celje their tall blonde striker, Armandas Kucys, looked dangerous showing good feet, upper body strength, positional sense and awareness where his teammates were.

After 20 minutes it was Kucys who set up Aljosa Matko only to be denied by Rovers’ keeper Leon Pohls who dived to his right to make one of his many crucial saves during the game.

One minute later Celje took a short corner practiced on the training ground with Kucys completely losing his marker as the ball was worked to the edge of the area.

However Kucys’ strike went past the post with Matko coming close to diverting the ball into the net.

It was the Slovenian side who broke the deadlock on 34 minutes with the right sided midfielder Luka Menalo finding the net.

This was a poor goal for Rovers to concede as they had that particular Celje attack on the right hand side outside the area covered.

However, a Celje player managed to get the ball to Menalo who was allowed to dribble relatively unchallenged into the area before striking a smart shot across Pohls into the bottom left hand corner.

The team from Slovenia are in good form lately having won their last domestic league game 4-2 with Kucys and Matko scoring a goal each.

by contrast, and in a further blow to their slim Airtricity Premier Division title ambitions, Rovers played out a one-all draw with bottom side Drogheda United at home on Saturday Stephen Bradley made six changes for this game and also brought on new Scottish signing Marc McNulty in place of Graham Burke.

Rovers were the better team in the first half with Darragh Burns breaking the deadlock after six minutes.

A good chance fell to McNulty who after rounding the ‘keeper from a Neil Farrugia through ball was unable to finish after he was had pushed wide by the Drogheda net minder.

Rovers were struggling to get that decisive second goal and it was Drogheda’s Douglas James-Taylor who found the top corner of ‘the Hoops’ net 17 minutes from time.

The Celje game on Thursday has a tip-off time of 8 pm.