Buckley confident he has got balance right
ST PATRICK’S Athletic manager Liam Buckley is confident he has got the balance right in his side ahead of the start to the new 2018 Airtricity League season.
The Inchicore side will be eager to improve on last year’s showing when they finished eighth in the table.
To that end, Buckley has injected some more youth into the side with the likes of James Doona, Jamie Lennon and former Aston Villa defender Kevin Toner
“We’ve made a few changes as tends to happen with most teams” Buckley told The Echo.
“We’ve got six or seven players in there now who are all very talented in my eyes, very good technically, and we’ve managed to hang on to a lot of the players that we had.
“I feel we have a good balance with experienced players like Christy Fagan, Conan Byrne, Ian Bermingham and Dean Clarke.
“We’ve got James Doona in from Rovers, Jamie Lennon up from the Under 19s. We brought Kevin Toner back from Aston Villa- a player with good pedigree and also Ryan Brennan who has played with Rovers and Bray,” he added.
Buckley also secured another attacking option with the recent signing of Jake Keegan from Canad-ian outfit FC Edmonton.
He is no stranger to the League of Ireland having lined out with Galway United and hit 27 goals in some 63 appearances for them.
Pat’s will kick-start their campaign with a clash against defending champions Cork City in Richmond Park this coming Friday and Buckley is not daunted by the challenge.
“We played Cork at the back end of last season and beat them 4-2.
“They have top quality players and can bring in anyone they want, but they’ve also lost players and it might take some time for their new ones to bed in.
“Last year we had a very average season. We dropped more points against the bottom three sides than most other teams, but if we can pass and play the way I know we can, then hopefully we’ll do a lot better this year.
“We beat Bray there recently. We were 3-0 up at halftime so results have been good so far,” he added.
That was followed up with a 12-0 rout of US outfit Sure Sports at Richmond Park last week in which Fagan, Madden, Toner, Byrne and Ian Turner were all among the scorers.
On another note, St Patrick’s have received a bye into the second round of the EA Sports Cup.
