Chris Shields points to 'false lead' as he plays down Linfield's huge advantage
Linfield stretched their lead at the top of the Irish Premiership to a mammoth 19 points following their win over Crusaders on Tuesday but Chris Shields believes talk of the league being over is premature.
The experienced Blues midfielder insists the table has a false look about it because Larne are still playing catch-up with the games they have to play. Linfield currently sit 25 ahead of the reigning champions, but Gary Haveron's side have seven games in hand on the current league leaders.
With that in mind Shields feels it will take until the split ahead of the final five games of the season to see a true reflection of the table and until then the Blues will focus their attention on winning as many games as possible.
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"All we can do is focus on ourselves," he said. "The lead at the minute is probably a bit of a false lead but all we can do is put the points on the board and we've been doing that.
"Until the league levels out you don't know where you're standing. You probably won't know until the split. We're coming up to the start of February and there's still a lot of games to play. I don't know how the Glens and Larne weren't playing on Tuesday night past, it boggles the mind.
"That's the bits and pieces that come with playing for Linfield, people maybe don't want to see us being successful. I'd imagine Larne probably would have wanted to play the game as it would have taken another one of their games in hand."
Despite picking up 2-1 wins over Cliftonville and Crusaders in their last two league games Shields admitted the two performances against the north Belfast sides were very different.
"Saturday was very good and was probably one of the most satisfying victories I've had since I've been here," he said. "Last season that would probably have been a game that would have got away from us and we would have got nothing from it.
"It was pleasing to come back in the fashion we did, we probably were the better team overall and I felt we were well-worth our win. Against Crusaders when it 1-1 we had to take the mindset to win the game by any means necessary because it was the only game on we had the chance to put more points on the board.
"I know fans want us to hammer teams at home but Crusaders put it up to us. They were coming off a decent win on Saturday and the players are playing for Decky and their places in the team.
"They never make it easy so to get a win is good. We missed chances, we could have easily come away winning 4-1. I don't think David Walsh had a save to make in the second half."
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