| Cook takes a pragamatic view ahead of big kick-off |
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| Thursday, 06 March 2008 | |
 With sligo Rovers kicking off their season tomorrow night (Friday 7 Mar) away to St Patrick's Athletic, Rovers boss Paul Cook, speaks to The Sligo Weekender about his hopes and expectations for the season ahead.
courtesy of The Sligo Weekender SLIGO Rovers will not win this season’s FAI eircom League of Premier Division according to the club’s first team manager, Paul Cook, who stressed that a concerted effort to win either the League Cup or the FAI Cup is among his targets. “To be fair, I think it is impossible,” he stated when asked if Sligo Rovers could vie for the year’s biggest prize with the likes of defending champions Drogheda United and St Patrick’s Athletic, last season’s runners-up, whom the Bit O’Red face this Friday at Richmond Park. “I don’t want to be a defeatist where I accept defeat too easily - but what I have got to be is a realist.” “Whether people like it or not and some people might criticise me for saying this, but there are only certain clubs that can win the Premier Division,” said Cook, whose charges wrapped up their pre-season build-up with a 4-1 home thrashing of Athlone Town last Saturday night at The Showgrounds. Cook admitted that the club’s precarious financial situation which has limited his spending power - a reality that hampered his predecessors - means title talk is premature. “At the minute we haven’t got the budget and we haven’t got the structure to win the Premier Division.” “What we have put in place is a squad that - in my opinion and [assistant-manager] Gerry Carr’s opinion - can certainly give any top team a proper match.” Three Sligo Rovers defenders - team captain Gavin Peers, Seamus Coleman and Danny Ventre - will miss Friday’s trip to Inchicore due to suspension which means new signing, centre-back Mauro Alexandre De Silva Almeida, could make his debut. Dubliner Anto Murphy, another of Cook’s close season captures, is in line to face his former club in Sligo Rovers’ first competitive game of 2008. |
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