Paul McMullan excited for league title tussle at Tolka as Derry City eye top spot

​Next Monday night in Dublin the Brandywell club has a chance to take a giant step towards that goal and return to the top of the table for the first time since March 1st when they visit the home of long-time leaders Shelbourne [kick-off 7.45pm].

They've been chasing the tails of Damien Duff's troops ever since game week three and were even EIGHT points off the pace seven matches into the season.

Shels have held leadership ever since but victory for Derry on Monday night would see them go top on goal difference - a 'goal' McMullan and his teammates have been fully focussed on during a two week break in play.

"It was a nice break," said the ex-Dundee man. "The two games prior to the break were pretty heavy-going for us. So probably having that wee week to recharge the batteries and for people to get fixed up if they had any wee knocks was good.

We've had a good week of training this week and we're ready to go."The winger wouldn't go as far as to say Derry's first round exit in Europe was a blessing in terms of their domestic ambitions but it certainly has allowed time to focus on a match which could have a major bearing on the destination of the title.

"The bodies are definitely going to be feeling better than if we had been playing Copenhagen twice and let's be honest, probably be chasing the ball for 180 minutes across the two Thursdays. So we've had time to work on stuff and hopefully we can put that into practice on Monday.

"We would've loved that as a group to go and test ourselves against such good opposition but unfortunately we fell short at the first hurdle and took a lot of criticism for that and rightly so.

"Thankfully for us we had a game three days later and were able to go and show everybody what we're all about and hopefully that will be the case again on Monday night and we can put in a similar performance.

"We're still involved in two competitions. We've knocked the holders out of the cup and we have a chance to go top of the league on goal difference on Monday.

"So we've done all the hard work in the first half of the season and put ourselves in the position where if we finish it properly, it could be a really good season and one that the club, the fans and the players remember for a long time."

"Going top would give you a nice feeling but there would still be 10 games to go. There will be a lot of ups and downs after that but of course it's our goal.

"We want to win on Monday and that win would put us top of the league which has been our goal, our focus for the last week or so since that cup game."

McMullan scored his first Derry goal against Shelbourne back in early May when the Candy Stripes missed out on replacing the Dubliners at the top of the table. Sean Boyd denied the Scotsman the winning goal with a late, late leveller and Shels haven't looked back!

McMullan knows the importance of these head-to-heads as Derry face Shels home and away in the title run-in but he reckons it would be far from a disaster if they didn't get three points.

"These head-to-heads are important of course because they have a wee lead on us. You don't want to give yourself too much to do.

"You want to be in position because, the way the league's going, teams are going to make mistakes. It's a competitive league and none of the two of us are going to win 11 games out of 11.

"So you want to be in a position that when someone makes a mistake you're there to capitalise and make up ground as we're doing the chasing at the moment.

"It's not going to be a case of, if the result doesn't go our way on Monday night, we're going to throw in the towel and say 'that's it, they've won the league'.

"Of course we're going out to win on Monday and try and get that gap as close as we can.

"In this league we view ourselves as one of the better teams and when we play against anybody we go out to win and fancy ourselves to win. We’ll put together a game plan which enables us to win.

"We've had a couple of weeks to tidy up a few things and get ourselves ready and hopefully we can put it all into practice on Monday.”