Lilies punished for a poor start

AZ Alkmaar might have won the battle on Thursday night but Patrick McEleney is confident Dundalk can still win the war by pipping the Dutch side to the last 32 of the Europa League.

McEleney described the 1-0 defeat to John van den Brom’s side as a ‘setback’ but insisted Dundalk still had a big chance of progressing to the latter stages of the competition in February and backed them to get the job done by beating Maccabi Tel Aviv for a second time.

‘We’ve scored in pretty much every away game and obviously we beat them here so we can take confidence from that,’ said the Derry man.

‘We’re definitely not out of it. It’s going to be a tough task going over there but if you had given us this situation before the start of the group we would have took it I guess so we’re not too downhearted.’

McEleney admitted his side made a slow start and paid the price against AZ but insisted the Lilywhites must now put that behind them.

‘You can put it down to many things but I think it’s just down to us,’ he said when asked for a reason for the sluggish opening.

‘It’s not like us. We got punished for it but we’re still in the tournament, we’re not out or anything, but it is a setback.

‘We felt they were there for the taking other than the early slip-up but it is what it is. We’re still in it and we still have a job to do.

‘It has been a tough time with everyone getting knocks and illnesses. We have a few ill in the group which is just bad timing but it’s still down to us, we should have started better.

‘The goal was a bad one to give away. We’ve gave away a few bad goals. It’s not as if teams are cutting us open, it has just been a few mistakes so we just have to try cut that out obviously.

‘In one off games we usually do well enough though and we’re definitely not out of it. We’ll be going over to Israel and trying to win,’ he said.