DEAN Shiels believes the arrivals of Patrick Burns and Ronan Doherty will help his squad immensely as they enter the second half of the campaign…

The duo have recently joined the Bannsiders in the January transfer window, with the pair in contention to make their debuts in tomorrow’s Premiership clash against Crusaders.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Shiels gave an update on other members of his squad as Dylan Boyle misses the visit of Declan Caddell’s side through suspension.

“We’re delighted to get Paddy and Ronan in – we feel they will really help us for the second part of the season,” he said.

“Ronan is fit and ready to go, Paddy is possibly lacking a bit of matches so we need to gradually try and feel him into it…we have another opportunity to do that on Tuesday in the North West Cup.

“Dylan will be suspended, Jack Scott is struggling still – he got on the grass recently so we’re hoping to get Jack back soon.

“Alfie Gaston is the same and we’re delighted to try and get Alfie back amongst the group because he is so talented and has been unlucky this year through injury, as has Aidan Tejeda.

“We have Aidan back amongst the group and they’ve been training so it’s just about getting them some game time and try to get as strong as we can for the second half of the season.”

Coleraine weren’t in action last weekend against Glenavon due to a frozen pitch at Mourneview Park.

As such, attention has now quickly turned to the visit of Crusaders, who Coleraine have suffered three successive 2-1 defeats against this season.

The performances in each of those games deserved something for Coleraine’s efforts and Shiels is hopeful they can finally get off the mark against the Hatchetmen.

He stated: “We’d prepared all week to go to Mourneview and unfortunately the game was called off.

“We reacted to that by getting a bit of work into the legs on Saturday to try and keep that rhythm without losing fitness levels.

“If you look at the last game against Crusaders when we went down to 10 men, we were brilliant and nearly got the equaliser.

“The fans were driving us on and you could see it when we played at home to Ballymena on Boxing Day that the fans were getting right behind us and were pushing us and driving us on.

“At home they’ve been brilliant this year and we need to keep going and give the fans something to get behind us about.”

Supporters can still get tickets for tomorrow’s game HERE.