Lyttle’s focus turns to 2018 season as Rovers secure top flight status
SLIGO Rovers manager Ger Lyttle says he wants to ‘wake this club up’ after its spent ‘the last two years sleeping’, as Rovers survived their relegation battle at United Park on Friday night.
Lyttle says he wants to see this club move into the top half of the table and with far less stress next year.
“For everyone involved, it’s been good to finish on a high. We wanted to win but it wasn’t to be. It would have been devastating if we went down tonight, for such a a big club, so many good people about here, and the supporters. I’ve never seen supporters like it. I’m a Cliftonville fan and the support there is brilliant but the support here, the passion they show, the commitment, it’s unbelievable,” Lyttle said following Friday night’s 0-0 draw.
He paid tribute to the committee for putting faith in him after Rovers had endured a difficult few months.
“For the committee and the directors who showed such faith in me to give me this job because let’s be honest it’s a big job and they put a lot of faith in me and I’m just glad to be able to repay them and keep the club up. There was a lot of pressure throughout the season. We came into the job and knew it was going to be difficult but we got there, we worked extremely hard on and off the pitch.
The former Cliftonville man says he wants everyone to learn from the mistakes made this season.
“The rewards is staying up tonight. Hopefully we can learn from the mistakes everyone has made, including myself and build on it. For me it’s one of the biggest club in the country and for me it’s been sleeping for the last two year and now, hopefully I can wake this club up and start building and be at the top end of the table and not the bottom end next year, and hopefully not go through the same stress.”
Coming into the game, Rovers knew that a point would be enough to secure their safety, regardless of how the Galway versus Dundalk game panned out.
Preparing for the game was difficult, Lyttle says, and with both Roddan and Donelon suspended, it didn’t make life any easier.
“It’s hard coming into a game knowing you just need a point. We set up to go and win the game and went on the attack. I knew it would be like this.
“We had a few distractions, training wasn’t on form as much as it was, and we lost our left back, we left Craig Roddan who’s been excellent and we lost our right back as well and we had to make shift that.
“A make shift team in certain areas and key areas where we’ve been solid, it wasn’t good but it wasn’t about the performance we knew we just needed to get the job done and we did that and we got what we needed.”
He declined to comment on reports about an incident with Tobi Adebayo-Rowling prior to the game, with the defender watching from the stands.
Lyttle was adamant in previous weeks that he would need his players to remain calm as nothing was done yet, so keeping them focused was a priority.
“We tried to keep them all grounded and focused all week and we tries to make sure that nobody was getting complacent because we knew that Drogheda is a great place to come and we knew that Pete Mahon is a professional person, we knew that they were going to try and win the game. It was important that we didn’t come here thinking that we just needed to turn up and get a result.
“To be fair to the boys they were defensively sound. We’re not worried about the performance.”
An injury to Shaun Patton in the second-half meant that Ed McGinty made his competitive debut on Friday night, in what was a huge game for the club.
Lyttle was full of praise for the young players who contributed massively.
“Everything’s been thrown at us. Young Ed coming in and making his debut and to be fair to him he’s kept a clean sheet so that’s the future of the club. I’ve got to mention young Jack Keaney in the centre of midfield too in a game of such importance,he was excellent. The players have been superb, Kyle and Sharkey and Gary Boylan. The future is bright here.”
Having turned things around since his arrival, Lyttle refuses to take all the credit, and says his backroom staff have been pivotal.
“We’ve great coaching staff. The important thing is to have assembled a good coaching staff, with good people skills and good on the training pitch. We have a goalkeeping coach who for me is one of the best (Rodney Dalzell), Kevin Deery has come in and added value to the backroom staff. Ryan Casey is one of the top coaches and Brian Dorrian too works with the u19s and the senior team. You have guys like Maurice (Monaghan) and Feo (Colin Feehily) and the physio (Declan Brennan). There’s good people around us. It’s important we keep that.”
Lyttle’s wife Kelly and sons have been ever-present at games throughout the year, and he says their support means the world.
“It means so much. They’re at every game. Kelly is a good omen for us. She’s been made to come to every home game there at the end, we’ve had to make sure that she had to drop everything.
“She has two salons in Belfast and she had to cancel appointments to make sure she came here so that’s what it’s about. I’m a family man, that’s one thing about Sligo Rovers, I always feel like it’s a family orientated club.”