Chris Shields insists Linfield don’t intend just to make up the numbers in tonight’s Europa League clash against FC Zurich.
Aiyegun Tosin and Wilfred Gnonto hit the goals at Windsor Park that gives the Swiss champions a 2-0 advantage when they roll out the welcome mat for David Healy and his team.
Franco Foda’s side are big favourites to face Scottish side Hearts in a play-off for the Europa League group stages, while defeat would send the Blues into the Europa Conference League play-off against either RFS (Latvia) or Hibernians (Malta).
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But Shields insists if Zurich are to progress, they’ll have to earn it.
“We’ll be going out with a positive attitude,” said the former Dundalk man. “We should have got more out of the game at Windsor Park, based on how well we played.
“We conceded two sloppy goals and you just can’t afford to that at this level – individual errors cost us. Zurich were obviously favourites . . . they are an established European team and the club’s budget is much greater than ours.
“Personally, I thought our performance was worthy of a draw. We’ll give it a crack in Zurich. If we can get an early goal, you never know what can happen. We’ve seen many historical comebacks in Europe before, so why can’t we be on the end of one.”
Even in defeat, the Blues still have the Europa Conference League to fall back on – they have ambitions of becoming the first Irish League club to reach the group stages of any European tournament.
“We must try to put the Conference League to the back of our mind...we can’t go into it against Zurich with an attitude we have the safety net of the Conference League,” added Shields.
“We knew if we got past our opening Champions League game (against The New Saints) there would be a big prize further down the track. We must now keep progressing, we still haven’t given up hope of making the Europa League play-off.”
When the Blues return from Zurich tomorrow, Healy will immediately begin preparations for his team’s opening match in the defence of their Premiership title against Portadown at Windsor Park on Sunday.
It will be an historic occasion – the first time Linfield will play a League game on the Sabbath.
“It means we are a victim of our own success,” said Shields.
“We want to be playing in high-magnitude Euro- pean games that will test us...we have a squad to handle this kind of congestion of fixtures.
“Whatever happens over the next few weeks and, if we could make the European group stages it would be fantastic.”
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