Galway United make the short hop down the M18 this evening for their first preseason friendly of a 2025 campaign which the Tribesmen’s manager, John Caulfield, warns could see the top-flight split in two between the ‘rich’ and the ‘rest’.

United will take on Treaty United at Frank Healy Park on the outskirts of Ennis tonight (7pm) in which they will field a string of trialists, with a decision on the future of some of those hopefuls set to be made over the weekend.

Speaking to City Sport this week, the United manager says he hopes to bring in at least one player, and possibly two, on loan for the new season, as well as three new signings, adding that all five will be overseas players.

“The way the market has gone this year . . . I have been around for a long time, and I have never seen it like this. I think you could see a split, the four Dublin clubs and Derry City have all gone to a totally different level to the rest of us, it is like two divisions with them and then ourselves, Waterford, Sligo, Cork and Drogheda, we can’t compete with what those clubs are offering.

“We spoke to three or four Irish players, but we just couldn’t match or even come close to what other clubs were offering. Even the likes of Cobh and Athlone in the First Division, they are signing players . . . I spoke to Shane Griffin [who has signed for Cobh after leaving Shelbourne], I spoke to other Irish players, and we were told we were offering half of what they were being offered by other clubs.

“We have worked well in the market abroad before with Vince [Borden] and Jeannot [Esua], and I suppose Pat [Hickey] is another overseas player who came to us after a spell at Athlone, so that is the market we will be looking at again, the overseas market.

“I have never seen anything like it, I don’t know where it [money] is coming from,” he says, but he adds that he doesn’t expect this to be another cycle of ‘boom followed by bust’ for the league.

“You have [Philip] O’Doherty who is the chairman at Derry, he is a billionaire; [Garrett] Kelleher is the chairman at Pats and he’s a billionaire; the Doyles up at Shelbourne and the US investment they have as well; [Dermot] Desmond and [Ray] Wilson at Rovers.

Pictured: John Caulfield and his new-look management team is looking to bring in new faces to take the goal-scoring pressure off Stephen Walsh.