Glentoran boss Warren Feeney confirms appointment of former Glenavon first-team coach

Ferguson was most recently part of Gary Hamilton’s coaching team at Glenavon, joining the Lurgan-based club in 2018, but departed Mourneview Park last week alongside assistant manager Paul McAreavey and coach Chris Atkinson after Hamilton’s almost 12-year reign came to an end.

He played a key role as the Lurgan Blues finished third in the 2018/19 Premiership table before Hamilton’s men recorded four consecutive seventh-placed finishes.

"I’m very pleased to welcome Mark Ferguson to the club as a First Team Coach,” Feeney told the club’s website. “Mark has been with Glenavon for the past few seasons so he’s very experienced, knows the league very well and brings a lot of skills and ideas to the club that will be very valuable to us.

"He’s an East Belfast boy, was a big part of various successes at Glenavon and he’ll add a lot of strength to our coaching staff.”

Glentoran enter tonight’s clash at The Oval sitting top of the table and are unbeaten in their last seven matches across competitions.

"A positive I did take from (last weekend’s draw with Dungannon Swifts) is that we kept our fifth clean sheet in eight league games,” he added. “When you consider how we’ve had to reshuffle our defence week after week because of injuries the boys who’ve played plus Aaron McCarey in goal deserve a lot of credit for that.

“We’ve had to shift other people around too, and we have an injury list that could probably make up another team.

"Obviously that’s part and parcel of football and not an excuse for a poor performance, but it puts a lot of players on other lads who’ve had to come in when maybe they weren’t quite ready, and Sean Murray who did really well in his twenty minutes, but who I’d like to have brought along a bit more slowly after such a long time out.

“I have a lot of respect for Oran (Kearney) and what he’s achieved there over a long number of years.

"They’re a good team, have good players and it’s going to be a test.

"I’m very pleased about how things are going so it’s a test we have to be confident about overcoming.”