News

FRIDAY night football returns this week as Linfield welcome Portadown to Windsor Park (745pm) in the Danske Bank Premiership.

A win for the Blues would take them level on points with Crusaders at the top of the table and a massive 10 points clear of the 3rd placed Ports, but striker Andy Waterworth says that all of the their focus is on their opponents and not the league table.

“I know it sounds cliché but we genuinely aren’t thinking about what the table might look like after Friday’s game,” said the Linfield number seven.

“Portadown are too dangerous a team.  They may be going through a bad run of results at the minute but if there is any game that they will want to show how good they are then playing Linfield at Windsor Park is it.”

You have to go back 19 games until 2002 to find Portadown’s last league victory at Windsor Park but they almost salvaged a point in December with Ross Redman’s last minute penalty being saved by Ross Glendinning in the Linfield goal to help his side to a dramatic 3-2 win.  Waterworth is expecting more of the same on Friday night.

“They will desperately want to win on Friday night and prove a point. I obviously know a lot of their players having played with them at Linfield over the past few seasons and they all have a great mentality and bags of ability, but our focus is on getting ourselves right on the pitch and playing the way we want to.

“We are playing with confidence at the minute and getting results. The title race will go right to the wire but all we can do is focus on our own game and keep getting results.”

Form Guide (last 10 Premiership Games)

Linfield  -  WDWDDLWWWW

Portadown  -  LDLDWWDLLW

Last five Premiership meetings

Linfield  3 – 2  Portadown   (20/12/2014)

Portadown  3 – 0  Linfield   (09/08/2014)

Linfield  1 – 1 Portadown   (19/04/14)

Portadown  1 – 2  Linfield   (08/03/14)

Linfield  3 – 2  Portadown   (21/12/13)