Drogheda begin search for a new manager

Drogheda United FC will today begin the search for a new manager. Interviews will commence shortly and a successor to Paul Doolin is expected to be announced early next week. The club has also confirmed that it will be part-time, however, it "expects" to be in this year's Premier Division and is already looking forward to top flight derbies with rivals Dundalk for the first time since 1998.

The news follows this morning's High Court ruling that Drogheda are safe to emerge from examinership, a process which they have been in since October. "We had a long hearing today in front of Justice Finlay Geoghegan and she ruled in favour of accepting the terms of the arrangement," club PRO Terry Collins told LMFM Sport.

"The club is now effectively out of examinership, from tomorrow midday, and it's onwards and upwards from here. We'll continue now in our efforts and try to put a manager in place over the next few days and start signing some players. That's the next objective now and we'll prepare ourselves for a big clash with Dundalk on 14 February (in the Malone Cup), which is what we're all looking forward to at the moment.

"Lessons surely have been learnt and we certainly will be cutting our cloth and making sure that we'll get through this year with no problems. Our budget will be drastically reduced. It will only be 20-25% of what we spent over the last few years. But, nevertheless, we feel that we will be able to put a good manager in place over the next few days.

"We've had a lot of people contacting the club expressing their interest in the job. Unfortunately, we weren't able to talk to them, but we'll be beginning that process immediately, and following that, we hope that we can start signing some players. Some of the candidates will be interviewed today and some of them tomorrow, and we expect to be appointing a new manager early next week. We won't have any full-time players; it will be a part-time setup for the forseeable future."

When asked what division he expects the club to be playing in when the season kicks off on 6 March, Collins was firm in his answer. "We expect to be playing Dundalk in the league next year," he said, "so that tells you that we want to be playing in the Premier Division. We want to have big gates like what we feel we deserve, and the judge in fact paid tribute today, not only to Vincent Hoey, but to the fans and the people in Drogheda who have rallied around and contributed money to save the club.

"We've got good support from all over the region and people have given us money who have never set foot in United Park or any League of Ireland ground before. It has been a remarkable achievement and the judge mentioned that today. We're just delighted to come out of this and that Drogheda United still exists. All we ever wanted to do was to keep this club alive and keep the name of Drogheda United alive, and I think we've achieved that today. The relief today is that we've come through the other side. It has been a long, hard slog for everybody involved, it has been non-stop, 24/7, and we're just so delighted to get to this stage."