Institute ready for new season as they head to Armagh City tomorrow

The Drumahoe club, who narrowly missed out on promotion, after Ballymena United defeated them after extra-time in the promotion playoff last May, and since that heartache 'Stute has lost some major personnel.

Since their loss at the Ballymena Showgrounds, first team regulars Dylan King, Shaun Leppard, Danny Laffery, Oisin Devlin and Liam Mullan have all left for pastures new in the Premiership and Deery concedes because of the departures he is continuing to look to add to his squad before the transfer window shuts later this month.

“Look, it’s always hard to build at Institute, it always has been and in a way we’re the victims of our own success,” he stated.

“We’ve lost obviously Liam Mullan, Oisin (Devin), Leps (Shaun Leppard), Dylan King and Danny Lafferty has gone to Ballymena and we’ve moved four or five on, so we’ve had a big turn over of players again.

“However what I would say is that we’re going to be really competitive and that’s all we can be, we can’t promise anything, but we’ll be really competitive and try to compete at the top end of the table again.

“We have a lot of young players and that’s where we’re at. We can’t sign players with experience, we just can’t bring them in, so as I said we’re all about developing players and Mark Mbuli is one that we feel we can develop and he can help the team.

“He knows the club having been here last year, before going to Finn Harps, but whatever happened there I don’t know, but as I said he’s one that we feel will benefit the squad in terms of competition, so we’re happy to get him back.”

The Creggan native concedes it’s always hard to build things at Institute because of their small budget, but he hopes that Niall Grace can show his experience, after he returned to action during pre-season.

“Niall is 31, so he has the experience,” added Deery. “He’s at a good age and he has had a tough time after that bad leg break when he was at Ballinamallard a few years ago, but we were delighted when he phoned us and said that he was feeling really good after doing a lot of hard work to get where he is, but that hard work will continue.

“He got 70 minutes against Coleraine and he was very good in the game. I felt we looked really competitive in the first half, so we've got loads of positives to take from the first half.

“Obviously then when you make a load of changes, which happens in every game, it starts to get away from you a wee bit and the fluency isn’t there.”
Deery is expecting a tough test at Holm Park this Saturday, especially as Shea Campbell’s side prepare for their first game back in the Championship in a number of years.

“We had three sessions this week to get ready for Armagh and we’ve prepared really well,” he explained.
“They’ll be direct and with it being their first season back in the Championship in a while, they’ll have a point to prove.

"They’ll see us as a big scalp, so we have to be on our guard and be ready to match their aggression and then play some of the football that we know we’re capable of doing.

“I felt on Saturday at Coleraine we played quite well in the first half but we conceded a few soft goals in the second half, which we can’t be happy about, but we’ve worked on that this week.

“Another thing we’ve worked on this week is a big shift in mentality to try and keep clean-sheets because that’s so important and it was a big building block for us last year, but obviously we’ve lost two of our regular starters in defence from last year.

“We’re fighting hard to find players to replace them, but the players that we have at the minute haven’t played at this level, so it’s going to be learning on the job for the new players coming in.

“As everyone knows we’re under tight restrictions in terms of getting the targets that we need, but we’re always trying to develop players and that’s what we’ll do again this season.”