Sports
Larne vs Gent: European experience will make Larne better – Haveron
Haveron says the starting line-up he chooses for Thursday night’s game will reflect “a mixture of experience and energy and youthful exuberance”.
“They [Gent] are a 4-3-3 team, they’re very attack minded. They commit massive numbers going forward, they like to ring boxes off from set pieces,” he observed.
“They’re a very dangerous side, they’re playing in a very competitive league. They’ve got European history and they’ve qualified year-on-year – a team that is expected to finish in the upper stages of the competition so we know we’ve got a lot to do.
“We’ve got to stay in the game for long periods.”
Larne midfielder Mark Randall agrees that the squad “have learned a lot collectively” from their European experience.
“It is a different level, a level above. There are teams you probably thought you could go toe-to-toe with and there are times we got it wrong sometimes,” he explained.
“Maybe the likes of Shamrock, maybe we thought ‘we can go out and have a bit more of a go’, but if you make mistakes you get punished badly, so the level is very, very good.
“It’s a totally different style of play. As a group we’ve learned to be comfortable out of possession. The levels of professionalism, athleticism, it’s just different level. We want to finish on a positive.”