‘ I won’t entertain talk of relegation’ - Robbo

SLIGO Rovers manager Dave Robertson has reassured fans that there’s no need to worry, following his side’s fourth defeat of the season.

Rovers fell to a 2- 1 defeat at the hands of Finn Harps at Finn Park on Saturday night, leaving them second bottom of the table, but Robertson says relegation is not on his mind.

“Anyone who talks about relegation around me, I wouldn’t entertain it. That’s not something, or a mindset that I would ever be in and it’s not a mindset I would ever allow my players to get in,” he said following the defeat.

He says he understands the frustration of the fans, who were vocal in their disgust of Saturday’s loss, and says he wants fans to know that they are doing everything in their power to turn things around.

“It is frustrating, it is annoying, it is hurting. It hurts me, it hurts the players. We do care, we care more than anything. In my team talk tonight I spoke about this being a North- West derby.

“It means everything to me, it means everything to the players. It means everything to the fans and the supporters. I can feel their frustration because I know of how much I care about this football club, how much it hurts me, I do understand that side of it.

“The one thing they can rest assured on is we are working morning, noon and night to make sure we put things right and turn this around. I don’t think there’s any need to worry,” he added.

The former Peterborough boss said he was ‘ devastated’ to lose on Saturday night in the North- West derby, and said he felt the pitch didn’t help his side get their ‘ free- flowing’ game going.

“The pitch is heavy, the pitch isn’t great, we couldn’t really get a free flowing passing game going tonight, we spoke about playing into certain areas. As soon as we did that in the second- half, it forces an error, Russler picks the ball up and it’s a great pass into Raff.

“Raff goes through one- on- one and puts us 1- 0 up. It is a tough place to come, because it’s a different and a difficult type of game. It’s a competitive, scrap, a physical battle. To concede 10 minutes later from the long free- kick, winning a header. I felt we had a couple of chances to deal with it and clear it.

“It might not be pretty, we spoke about it last week, sometimes you have to win ugly when the conditions are like this. We had opportunities to deal with it and we didn’t. At that stage we made some changes to try and go on and win the game, not just to take a draw.

“It’s another long ball, a cross into the area and a penalty. I haven’t seen it back so I’m not in a position to make an evaluation on whether it was or whether it wasn’t a penalty.

“To lose a North- West derby with a 93rd minute penalty is devastating for me, devastating for the players,” he said.

Many fans would have pin- pointed the fixture with Finn Harps as a must- win game for Rovers, losing that game is a blow to any plans for the season ahead.

“It is a blow. Any game, when you play anyone and go 1- 0 up in the 60th minute and then you end up losing 2- 1, yeah that’s a blow. I couldn’t agree anymore. It’s a game that I felt, especially when we took the lead, that we should have gone on and won. We need to do the ugly sides of the game better,” said the Rovers boss.

He feels, however, that his side are not back to where they started, nor does he feel that the defeat undoes the good of the win over Bray.

“We’re not back to square one. It doesn’t undo it. It makes next week’s game against Galway even bigger. I keep saying it, every game is a massive games.

“We’re six games into a 33 game season. What we do need to do is put points on the board. When we’re 1- 0 up we need to defend those areas a little bit better and be more resilient.

“Every game is a must win game. I would approach any game as a must- win game. I would have seen tonight as a must- win game. We want to continue to make progress.”

Asked whether the performance was good enough, Robertson said: “Our performance was relevant to the pitch, the conditions. We were disciplined, we were committed. We spoke about being patient, we didn’t have to chase the game, they chased the game then.

“They’re a classic counter- attack team. I felt in terms of all of that we got everything right on the night.

“The one thing is, we’ve got to deal with is we’ve got to deal with set- pieces better. The bottom line is if it is a penalty it’s a mistake and we’ve got to eliminate them out of our game.”

What precisely does Robertson feel his side need to work on?

“We need to continue to improve on the areas that we’ve seen improve, our attacking play, we need to make sure we have a defensive resilience because there’s nothing wrong with our defensive shape.

“It’s been good. It’s in those key moments when we have one, two, three chances to clear the first one, we don’t and they score and we make mistakes where we’re not in the right position to be able to defend crosses,” he said.

Regan Donelon is expected to return to action on Friday night. “He was suffering a little bit, he’s covering a very heavy knock that he got in that St. Pats game, he got some bone bruising and he’s still got some pain.

“He trained with us in the first session on Thursday and Friday, he was still feeling it. He’s making good progress and we’re hoping he’ll be back for Galway on Friday especially with it being his hometown club.”

Robertson also said he is still looking to add to his squad. It’s understood that the proposed signing of Belgian defender Bryan Van Den Bogaert could still be in the pipeline following initial issues with registration at former club Ebbsfleet.

“I am yeah, that work is continuing and ongoing. We’ll keep working away.”