Ciaran Coll happy to fight for Derry City place

With the Brandywell men’s left side of defence looking their strongest position this season, the 29-year-old is ready to battle it out with Danny Lafferty and Cameron McJannet and he even uses his drive into training every day to focus on working hard in each session.

"You want competition for places because you want to push yourself that extra wee bit, to give the management team a bit of a headache to see who is going to play here or there,” he stated.

“As I have said before I'll play anywhere as long as I'm in that starting eleven for each game.

"As I'm now living in Donegal town, my head every day is set now coming in from there to hopefully have a good training session and then do my best to make sure that I can get into Declan's team for the Longford game.

"I'm looking forward to the game and we have to go and put a marker down to show other teams in the league what we are going to be about.”

Coll is happy that pre-season came to an end with a draw against Shamrock Rovers on Saturday and believes the new look Derry squad need to just erase everything that happened last year and just put all their focus into having a good 2021.

In fact the ex-Finn Harps man wants to experience European football again in the future, after getting a small taste of it against FK Riteriai last August.

"It's a great feeling when you have pre-season over you, because it's probably one of the horrible times during any player's career in football, but look I'm really looking forward to things getting underway this season again,” he said.

“All we have to do is look to enjoy the season and basically delete everything that happened last year and start this season afresh.

"There is plenty of youth in the squad and then you have the likes of Danny (Lafferty), Eoin (Toal), wee Jackie (Ciaron Harkin), myself and Darren Cole have a bit of experience, but how the team has bonded this year during pre-season so far has been brilliant.

"What we are hearing from the management staff is that they are loving it, so we need to keep this good tight group together both on and off the pitch and hopefully we can start climbing that table as early as possible.

"I just want us to get back pushing for a European place, because having played in Europe last year in Lithuanian against FK Riteriai and that's where I want to be again.

“I want to be back playing in Europe, it was my first time last year and it was a great experience and this club needs to be back in playing European football every season.”