SURVIVING THE TURBULENT Toumba tonight to make more precious moments back home is the goal for Stephen Bradley’s Shamrock Rovers.
With the league phase of the Conference League already secured, Rovers will give qualifying for the Europa League equivalent a right shot against PAOK, starting with this first leg in the sapping heat of Thessaloniki.
Having dispatched Slovenian champions Celje on a memorable night in Dublin 24 last week, this represents a much greater challenge for Hoops.
PAOK will be hurting having blown a chance to make the Champions League play-offs last week when losing a seven-goal thriller at home to Malmo.
Razvan Lucescu’s side led 3-2 only to concede an equaliser deep in stoppage time and then lose out to a Swedish winner in extra-time.
The Greek champions have a multi-national squad with players from a dozen countries with their team last week boasting a total of almost 300 international caps between them.
But while they’ve scored 12 goals in their five games so far this season in Europe and domestically, they’ve leaked 10.
An area Rovers will be hoping to exploit.
Bradley said: “You just have to listen to what you’ve listed to know they’re a top team.
“But you don’t expect anything different at this stage of the competition.
“As I’ve said before, we’ve faced really good teams in the past, even this year with Sparta Prague.
“These will be as good as what we’ve played. But this is where you want to be. You want to be testing yourself against this level.
“They’ve shown how to score goals, but also that they can concede. I believe if we’re at our best we can score goals against any team and tonight will be no different.
“We saw last week that in Europe how vital it is to take your moments and hopefully we do that.”
Last week was the first of Rovers’ three group-stage qualifications in Europe to have been clinched in Tallaght.
Giving themselves every chance of a repeat of that is the goal.
Bradley said: “We know it’s two-legged and the plan is to take it back to Tallaght and let’s see what we have to do. But we’re fully focused on tonight.”
The guaranteed place in the Conference League’s new Swiss-system league phase brings a minimum of approximately €4 million in prize money with further results based bonuses over the six games there.
Qualifying for the league phase of UEFA’s mid-tier Europa League competition would bring an additional €1 million in minimum prize money when teams then play eight games.
Bradley reports that skipper Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes is fully recovered from the knock to a knee he shipped against Celje.
The re-signed Danny Mandriou is also all cleared and available.
Though the attacking midfielder hasn’t played in some time, Bradley insists he has trained and will be involved. Strikers Johnny Kenny and Rory Gaffney remain out.
With Conference League league phase guaranteed, Bradley refused to admit the pressure is off as he focuses on trying to take Rovers’ season a step further.
He said: “I told you that we understand what it means to the club.
“For most clubs like us around Europe it’s really important financially and we’re no different.
“That wasn’t our thought process, or what we spoke about, because you can’t. You’ve to focus on the process and performance because everything else looks after itself.
“It’s nice knowing that we’ve secured it, but we don’t talk about finances in the dressing-room or team talks.
“It’s nice knowing that we’ve secured group-stage football because that was one of our aims at the start of the year… but nobody has started reflecting on the season.
“We’re still in the league, have tonight and next week, as well as the group stages either way.
“There’s a lot to play for so the time for reflection is the end of the season.”