Gill still holds out hope for the City

On Soccer: Just eight games into the new campaign and John Gill admits that life in the Premier Division with Dublin City has started to affect his reading and viewing habits.

Juggling a day-time job as a sales manager and an every-other-waking-hour role as City boss, he probably didn't have a whole lot of time on his hands for wading through the media anyway. But, after enduring several weeks of "unreasonable negativity", he says he has now abandoned a good proportion of the printed press and a certain late night weekly on TV3.

Gill isn't the first manager to get agitated over the certainty with which the pundits have predicted a swift return to the first division for his players. And for all the indignation of his predecessors, the record books show that in the majority of cases the teams in question did indeed find the going a little too tough.

Those few clubs to have successfully established themselves at the higher level after winning promotion in recent years have generally done so after spending more heavily than would appear to be an option for City, and on the face of it the club's early season form has had relegation written all over it.

Certainly one point from 21 was no way to silence the critics, but Gill has a point when he argues that the quality of the team's performances have not come close to being reflected in terms of the points tally.

The win over Bohemians is, as Gill concedes, "just one night", but it remains a distinctly positive outcome to a night when it would have been easier to have imagined Stephen Kenny's side turning over the new boys by a bit of a margin.

Instead, Gill fielded an extra midfielder in a team that succeeded in frustrating their more highly rated opponents for long spells. After Gary O'Neill opened the scoring in the 23rd minute, belief seemed to grow that the home side might finally be on to something, and from the time Keith Foy restored their lead from the penalty spot 21 minutes from the end, they defended their advantage as if their lives depended on it.

That sort of character will be required again during the months ahead as a rather diverse squad battles to achieve what club chairman Ronan Seery has clearly identified as the target for this year: ninth place in the final table.

Seery, like Gill, feels staying up this year would more than match the achievement of winning the first division last year. The manager's budget has increased substantially but remains, according to the club's endlessly enthusiastic leading official, well short of 10,000 per week.

Even those sort of numbers seem difficult to reconcile with the rather modest crowds that have paid to see the team play at Tolka Park. However, Seery remains upbeat about the chances of more support to the point where average attendances, built in no small measure on away supporters, can reach perhaps 1,200. The early evidence suggests that it will not be easy, but Seery is clearly undeterred, and he unveiled a new discounted season ticket initiative (60 for the rest of the campaign) last week while continuing to promote a share issue that, he hopes, will raise 2 million.

Much of his vision, it seems, is built on his belief in the marketability of the club's name, changed from Home Farm not long after he took over what he calls the club's League of Ireland "franchise" seven years ago. How successfully he can build identification with the club remains to be seen, but his own faith in the project is absolutely beyond doubt.

Similarly, Gill admits to having an abundance of belief in his ability, and given what he has to work with he remains convinced the team can survive at this level.

He had, he says, more money available during the close season than he managed to spend, as a number of players turned down moves to City on the basis that they did not relish the club's prospects. Next time around, he reckons, the bigger names will be that little bit easier to coax on board.

For the moment, though, the plan consists of getting the very best out what he has available to him. The half of the squad not newly recruited is a mixture of youngsters returned from England, players with Premier Division experience and a handful who did well enough in the first division last year to convince Gill that they could cope at the higher level.

Already 21 of the 22-man panel have tasted league action of some sort, and their manager believes that most have done well enough. Jason Colwell, Gary O'Neill, Don Tierney and Ben Whelehan come in for particular praise.

The lack of a play-off at the end of the campaign will certainly help their cause, but for everybody up at the Premier Pivision's newest club it's going to be a long, hard but, doubtless, interesting season.