Dundalk face their biggest challenge yet in Zenit

Europa League Group D preview: Dundalk v Zenit St Petersburg

Venue: Tallaght Stadium

Kick-off: 8.05pm

Television: Live on EirSport 1 and ESPN

For all the sense of excitement that accompanied Dundalk’s qualification for the Europa League, there was the inevitable fear that by the time Zenit came to town it might be to confirm the Irish club’s status as group also-rans.

Instead, the team from St Petersburg travel to Tallaght Stadium with their hosts sitting second in the group and Stephen Kenny still speaking about relishing the occasion but striving to win the game.

The financial might of the Russians, who have a reported annual budget of around €165 million, suggests Dundalk will do well to simply preserve their unbeaten status. But their manager’s mindset appears to be anything but one of surrender.

“We have a chance of going top of both leagues tomorrow, that’s the way I am looking at it,” he said. And he sounded like he meant it too.

Battered bodies

Kenny will again be without his skipper Stephen O'Donnell, while there are doubts over Seán Gannon, Chris Shields and David McMillan, and he talked yesterday about a dressing-room of battered bodies after the win in Longford on Monday night.

“You should be euphoric that you’ve won and we’re seven points clear but you’re not,” he said. “You’re looking at it thinking: ‘Jesus, we’re playing Zenit in two days’. You’re looking around thinking: ‘We’re in trouble’. You’re thinking along the lines of: ‘How do we get ourselves right.’

“But after two or three days your optimistic nature overrides that. We’ve got a strategy and have watched Zenit so we’re thinking: ‘Whatever it takes, we just have to put a team together that can really put in a good performance and try to create chances to win the game.’”

Barely more than a month ago it would have sounded like wishful thinking but not so much now, after the team’s two opening games brought four points.

Anchor

Even aside from the injuries, Kenny has a decision or two to make with Gary Rogers’s greater experience making a return for the goalkeeper a possibility and O’Donnell’s absence raising questions about precisely who will anchor midfield, particularly if Shields misses out.

His opposite number, Mircea Lucescu, has problems of his own, with Yuri Zhirkov, once of Chelsea, as well as Portuguese midfielder Danny and Russian international right-back Igor Smolnikov all out. However, the Romanian coach is not shy about suggesting that it shouldn't matter.

"Yes, I expect to win," he said. "But that's normal, Zenit are an important team, Champions League level so [we] look to win these games. It probably won't be easy, but we expect to do it."

Lucescu would not be the first opponent Kenny and his players had disappointed on that score this season but the task has never been more daunting than it will be in this sold-out game.