Linfield boss David Healy has told his players that extending a unique 365-day home record could be key to their hopes of progressing in this season’s Champions League.
It is exactly a year to the day that the Blues, who trail TNS 1-0 heading into Wednesday night's second leg, conceded first in a competitive match of any description at Windsor Park.
In their last 25 games in all competitions at their South Belfast home - 19 league games and six cup ties - the Big Two giants have never been behind.
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The last time they trailed at Windsor was on July 13, 2021 when they suffered a 2-1 defeat to Zalgiris Vilnius of Lithuania in last year’s Champions League.
“We were not behind for a single second of a league game at Windsor Park last season which is an incredible statistic,” said Healy.
“But we drew on four occasions because we let teams off the hook. We lacked a ruthless, clinical edge at times and we didn’t always turn good play into goals.
“We can’t afford to do that against TNS or they will punish us. We also don’t want to put ourselves out of the tie in the first 30 minutes.
“Of course, we want to play on the front foot and put pressure on TNS, but we also need to ensure we don’t concede an early goal and give ourselves a mountain to climb.”
TNS are marginal favourites to progress to the second qualifying round after securing a 1-0 win in last week’s first leg at Park Hall in Oswestry.
The Welsh champions had former Northern Ireland U21 winger Ryan Brobbel to thank for their narrow advantage, the 29-year-old slotting home an impressive winner in the second half.
“I was impressed with TNS,” said Healy. “They have players with League One and League Two experience and other players that have played a lot of European ties.
“They are a good team but we were probably too respectful in the first half. We set ourselves standards and I thought we fell well short of those standards.
“We only played to 60 percent of our usual standard so if we can improve on that, we can win the tie. We’re confident if we play to the best of our ability that we can win.”
If Linfield progress they are likely to meet Bodo Glimt, who beat Celtic in last season’s Europa Conference League and are 3-0 up on Klaksvik of the Faroe Islands from last week’s first leg in Norway.
A defeat would see the Blues drop into the Europa Conference League where they would play either Swedish giants Malmo or Vikingur Reykjavik of Iceland.
Wednesday night's game at Windsor Park has a 7.45pm kick-off.
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