Ballinamallard manager Gavin Dykes expects Ballymena to be a ‘wounded animal’ on Saturday when his side travel to the Showgrounds to take on David Jeffrey’s outfit.
The Sky Blues had been on a seven game unbeaten run in the league that included victory over leaders Crusaders before shipping five goals in a heavy defeat to Glenavon last week and Dykes is expecting a response from them this week to that loss.
“They are going very well, they had a set back on Saturday but they will be a wounded animal. It is a tough place to go at the best of times, it’s a long journey for us but we’ll go there and have a go like we do every week.
“They have threats from all over the place, they are a big side, they score a lot of goals from set plays and David has them very well organised but we’ll work on that and try and plan for it,” he stated.
Ballinamallard slipped to a 2-1 defeat to Portadown at Ferney Park last Saturday but Dykes was disappointed not to have taken something out of the game given the chances they had created over the course of the encounter.
“It’s disappointing that we lost, we had enough chances but we didn’t put them away. If we weren’t creating chances I would be more disappointed and I would imagine that we’ll play worse than that and win.” he said. “We bossed the game and we had more possession but the difference is that we didn’t take our chances. The second goal we gave away was a calamity, we should be dealing with that when the ball bounces and the boys were saying it was a foul on the goalkeeper but I’m not that sure about it. Then we had any amount of chances to put the ball in the back of the net and we didn’t do it. I thought in patches we passed the ball very well but it is all about scoring goals and taking your opportunities.”
He also feels that it was a chance missed to put further daylight between the Mallards and bottom placed Portadown.
“We lost against Portadown, Portadown are bottom of the table. It was an opportunity for us to go put ourselves more points ahead of them. At the moment they are now 14 points behind us and that is very doable. We have just got to stay ahead of them and ahead of Carrick and hopefully build,” he added.
And he reveals that he will add to his squad when the transfer window opens in January.
“The transfer window is coming in January and I can definitely tell you now that I will add to it. I think we need a few players,” said Dykes.