Improvement is required
SLIGO Rovers need to be near flawless in the eight games that remain this season, where they’ll have to win at least five times – and also pray that St Patrick’s Athletic, currently seven points ahead in fourth place, suffer an unlikely meltdown – if a place in Europe is to be secured for 2023. Alongside perfect results, Rovers manager John Russell wants better performances.
The scratchy display that Rovers got away with against Drogheda United simply won’t do against the likes of Derry City, Shamrock Rovers and St Pat’s in the coming weeks.
Russell was understandably angry following last Saturday’s 2-0 home defeat of Drogheda – this was Rovers’ 11th win in 28 games and their second successive victory against a Louth club following the win against Dundalk on the weekend before last. The worrying issue was that Rovers failed to push on after taking the lead through a classy finish by Frank Liivak in the opening 10 minutes. It took over an hour for the home side to double their advantage and that was through leading marksman Aidan Keena’s converted penalty.
“It was good to get the three points but it was a very poor performance,” said Russell.
“The first 15 minutes or so wasn’t bad. We started the game quite well but after that [going in front] we were sloppy in possession and we didn’t move the ball quickly enough.
“That [pattern] carried into the second-half and it made it a scrap. We didn’t put pressure on the ball, I thought we were just very bad.” He continued: “There were a couple
of things that are still there, things that have come up over the last couple of weeks – things that we are still doing and we need to stop doing. That is the disappointing thing.
“Frank’s goal was the only moment of quality in the game – it lit up the place. We wanted that, we wanted to be on the front foot, score early and dominate.
“But there was sloppy play from us. We were exposed once or twice and that wasn’t from good play by Drogheda – it was from us making mistakes and those kind of mistakes aren’t acceptable.”
The result was the overriding positive and, in the middle of his downbeat postmatch assessment, Russell admitted that winning matters too.
“Of course it was important to grind out the win. But I don’t want to be having to grind out results like this, in front of our home fans, when we should be dominating games.”
Next up against away games against Shelbourne and Derry City. The latter fixture at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium was originally scheduled for Friday, July 22.
Russell is wary of the threat that Shelbourne will pose at Tolka Park tomorrow, Friday. “We need to be a lot better against Shelbourne than we were against Drogheda. Shelbourne are well organised and they have a lot of good, hungry players.
“They are playing well and they’ve been picking up results.
They have also been unlucky in terms of conceding late goals – they will be difficult opponents,” he stressed.