Paul Fennessy

SHAMROCK ROVERS boss Stephen Bradley has resisted the temptation to become embroiled in a war of words with Ferencvaros ahead of tomorrow night’s Europa League qualifying first leg.

The Hungarian club’s sporting director Tamas Hajnal made the provocative remarks speaking to local media, suggesting the Hoops had a “British” style in remarks that will have a ring of familiarity to many Irish teams that have travelled abroad over the years.

Per The Irish Independent, Hajnal said: “We know that we are the favourites for this match, it will be very important to process this mentally.

“In the two matches, our goal cannot be other than to reach the group stages of the Europa League.

“We also know that Shamrock Rovers represent an unpleasant, British style of physical football and we have to prepare for that, not get into their style but to make use of our abilities and get into the Europa League group stage.”

Bradley, however, was unwilling to offer a strong response to these comments.

When asked about the matter, the Rovers boss simply said: “His opinion doesn’t interest me, to be honest.”

On whether the remarks could serve as motivation for his team, the reply was similar: “As I said, that doesn’t interest me. His opinion doesn’t interest me. We focus on what we came here to do. We’re focused on our game plan and let’s see where it takes us.”

A difficult task for Rovers has been made even harder with the news that as many as six first-team players are unavailable for the first leg: Graham Burke, Chris McCann, Aidomo Emakhu, Ronan Finn, Roberto Lopes and Simon Power.

There is also the unwanted distraction of key players being linked with moves away from the club ahead of the British transfer window’s closure at the end of the month.

In recent weeks, Blackpool have been strongly linked with a move for Ireland U21 international Andy Lyons, while Emakhu has also been the subject of interest from clubs abroad.

However, Bradley says no first-team players will be leaving in the current window, adding with regard to Lyons: “We’re in control of that situation, he’s under contract, we know that. So there was never any panic or rush with any of the bids that we have for our players

“We’ve done really well in the past few years out of selling players and we’ll continue to do that over the next few years, but it was an easy conversation with Andy and his agents and the people around him.”

Bradley previously expressed annoyance with the “unacceptable” travel chaos that has impacted his side’s preparations for big European games this season, and Rovers had to fly out via Shannon Airport again for Thursday’s fixture.

However, in this instance, the manager played down any sense of frustration.

“We’re used to it now, we’ve had to do it a lot this year. It’s not ideal, but it’s fine,” Bradley said.

On tomorrow’s match, he added: “It’s a really good opportunity for us. We know it’s a difficult game, but we’ve shown in the past over two legs we can be a match for anybody so hopefully tomorrow we can perform and bring it back to Tallaght.

“I think our experiences over the past few years have helped us grow and become better.

“Both good experiences and bad experiences [in Europe] have helped us and hopefully, we can show all that experience and know-how tomorrow night.”