Drogheda United have just released a DVD celebrating their premier division title success in 2007.

It’s a measure of just how quickly fortunes are reversed that Derry City’s opponents in tonight’s league opener, are red-hot favourites to be relegated this time around.

After the financial problems which almost brought the club to its knees last year, they are incredibly fortunate to even compete this time around.

The same goes for Cork City. Both clubs were deducted ten points for going into examinership last season and but for favourable rulings in the courts, both might have gone to the wall completely.

Derry have so far avoided being dragged into financial controversy, a legacy of their prudent dealings of the last decade or so after almost disappearing themselves.

But the books made for grim reading at last year’s annual general meeting and despite the high profile signings by Celtic of Paddy McCourt and Niall McGinn, manager Stephen Kenny did not have large amounts of cash to splash over the winter close season.

He’s assembled a small first team squad of 18 players with just three new arrivals.

Liam Kearney, a signing from Cork, is brought in as a direct replacement for McGinn.

He’s a natural winger who Kenny says has slotted straight into the side during pre-season. Ger O’Brien has joined the club from Shamrock Rovers. He’s a full back signed to replace Sean Hargan who has joined Crusaders.

The final piece of Kenny’s jigsaw is David Scullion who joined the club from Glentoran last month.

It’s going to be a hugely important year for striker Sammy Morrow as he looks forward to his first full season at the club up front alongside Mark Farren while with Kevin McHugh now at Linfield, it’s ex-Blueman Thomas Stewart who makes up the remainder of the striking unit, which may leave them a little undermanned in that department with a long hard season of over 50 games ahead.

Nonetheless, Derry are the bookies’ second favourites for the league behind Pat Fenlon’s Bohemians.

The league remains the holy grail as far as Kenny is concerned, having guided them to third place last year and runners-up to Cork in his previous full year in charge.

Bohs finished a whopping 19 points clear last year and Fenlon has managed to bolster his squad.

He has raided Drogheda for a couple of players but the key man could be Joseph N’do, brought in from St Pat’s.

Derry need to make the Brandywell as impregnable as possible starting with three points this evening from the visit of Drogheda. They lost too many home games last season, the main reason why they were unable to mount a more convincing challenge to Bohemians.

They play both Bohs and Cork over the course of the next few weeks which has the potential to set the tone for the rest of the season ahead.

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Pragmatic as ever, even Derry boss Stephen Kenny has Bohemians down as favourites for the League of Ireland premier division title.

“Bohs will be strong favourites but we want to do extremely well," he said.

“We performed well last season, qualifying for Europe and getting to two cup finals.

“We've got to try and improve on last season which will be difficult. We have 36 games this year which is an extra three games so it's going to a real marathon because we will play in excess of 50 times."

On his return to Derry to begin his second stint in charge in December 2007, Kenny warned that it would take time for them to make up the ground that Drogheda United had opened up by winning the title the previous year.

The landscape has changed since then and in contrast to many of the other leading clubs, Kenny has presided over a period of relative calm at the Brandywell.

"There has been a levelling out in standards of competitiveness and I think it will be a very, very competitive league this year," he said.

"There is no doubt a lot of clubs were living way beyond their means and there was some really crazy stuff going on in relation to budgets.

"It's important for Derry City that we progress as a club in all aspects. We need the stadium to be developed and to try to continue our full-time set-up if at all possible.“