Stephen McDonnell hoping to get Glenavon's star man back to his best after brace in maiden league victory

Campbell scored twice in their 3-1 triumph over Carrick Rangers last weekend – a result which marked McDonnell’s maiden league victory since taking over from Gary Hamilton – and also played a key role for Niall Quinn’s strike that secured all three points.

The 26-year-old has been one of Glenavon’s main sources of creativity since arriving from Loughgall in 2020, contributing 11 assists in his first campaign and scored 12 Premiership goals the following season.

That sort of form resulted in the winger being linked with a host of Irish League clubs in the past and an in-form Campbell could provide the required spark for Glenavon to start climbing the table from their current position of 10th.

"Peter's numbers in terms of goal contributions only two seasons ago were probably up there with the best players in the league,” said McDonnell. “We have to get Peter Campbell back to those levels.

"He has been creating numerous chances for the team and he scored two of his own last week.

"He had a big part to play in the third too with his ball carrying skills.

"Peter is a massive attacking talent and we're slowly getting to understand the players that bit more. We feel like we're getting somewhere."

McDonnell has developed a reputation for a possession-based, attacking brand of football in the early stages of his coaching career and says there’s no temptation to move away from that philosophy.

"It's down to opinions in the game and how we see things,” he added. “For me, I would rather dominate the ball more than not because that means you're giving the opposition less opportunity to have an impact on the game. That's how I see it.

"I find that hard to beat rather than people saying ‘would you not play longer and take less risks?’.

"When you play longer the game becomes 50/50 and that gives the opposition a greater opportunity to get a foothold in the game.

"If there's a method behind why we do things, we make it measurable in our own changing room and make people understand why we do it, that's probably the most important part.

"We're early days into this. We have to give the players time to adapt and adjust.

"I felt like if we could perform against the top teams then it would give us encouragement that we could do it against any team.

"We're happy to stick with and trust what we believe in."

The 31-year-old has also challenged his side to back up last weekend’s positive result against Rodney McAree’s men, who currently sit bottom of the Premiership table, but are only one point adrift of Newry City, Glenavon and Ballymena United.

Glenavon haven’t lost any of their last 11 home league meetings with the Swifts and McDonnell is keen for his side to keep ticking off milestones.

"We're still amongst a number of teams around the bottom and we just have to take it game by game and prepare the best we can,” he said. “Last week was the first time the team has scored three goals in one game this season so it was a mini-milestone that we hadn't reached as a team.

" Another one is that we haven't backed up a positive result with another.

"We haven't had two back-to-back results as a club this year and that's something we have to try and achieve."