Defeat to Blues is ‘a slap in the face’ says Lyttle

SLIGO Rovers manager Ger Lyttle said Saturday night’s defeat was a ‘slap in the face’ for his side, and that it might be ‘the wake up call’ they needed.

Despite controlling proceedings in the first-half, Rovers were unable to break the deadlock and faded away once the visitors took the lead through Darren Dennehy just past the hour mark.

“It was really disappointing,” Lyttle lamented. “We wanted something so bad, especially with the supporters that turned out in their numbers. Obviously for the 3,000th game you just want to reward everyone with a win but it wasn’t to be.

“Everyone is disappointed that we couldn’t get off the mark but it’s only the first game, we can’t mope about it. We can’t be downbeat about it. We’ve got to leave it behind and move on and prepare for the Derry game.”

The Bit o’Red certainly started the game well, but once they conceded they were unable to really trouble Limerick.

“That’s what we spoke about. We controlled the game up until they scored and once they scored it was like the boys went into their shell and didn’t dust themselves and go forward.

“We’ve a new team in terms of personnel coming in and we’re finding out about them. Pre-season prepares you for that and it’s potentially the wake up call we needed.”

Injuries to Regan Donelon and Raff Cretaro meant that Lyttle was forced to put together a makeshift back four of some description, and those changes were a suckerpunch having played with attacking full-backs throughout pre-season.

“Craig Roddan has stepped in and done a job for us tonight. Gary, we had to move out to the left and it’s not natural for him.

“I know he’s played there before. That sort of kills us in terms of how we wanted to go about our business.

“We prepared all pre-season with full-backs attacking and giving us good width, we couldn’t do that naturally tonight. It’s not an excuse.

“The goal, I thought we could have dealt with it a lot better, Sharkey’s cleared the first header and in the second phase we haven’t closed the ball down properly and we haven’t defended properly in the six yard box which is something we’ll talk about.” Rovers now have two home games on the bounce in which they will be looking to make up for Saturday night’s result. They host Derry City on Friday, before Cork City come to town on Monday.

“We spoke about it being a fortress here and tonight we didn’t make that count. That, for me, has to be an added armour in the tank in terms of teams coming here and being a really difficult place to get a result. That was the disappointing thing.

“I’ve said to the boys before the game that we can’t have any regrets. This is a game where we need to be earmarking for a win. It’s a slap in the face for us.”

There is still some work to be done, though, and Lyttle admits that defending is the main area of concern.

“Honestly defending (needs to be worked on), defending balls into the box potentially. Outside of the goal they didn’t really open us up until they were going for the game.

“Outside of that, Schlingermann’s had a good save in the first-half and outside of that I can’t remember. Their keeper’s had a quiet second-half as well. Overall, I don’t think we created enough, I don’t think we bossed the game enough in the second-half, I thought we were a wee bit soft in some ways.”

The former Cliftonville boss has been working for some time to try and secure the final few additions to the squad for the new season.

Waterford’s Patrick McClean was understood to be close to be signing, and he travelled to The Showgrounds on Saturday night to watch the game.

“I think we need to add two. You seen tonight the squad was low in numbers, and it’s something I don’t want to go through this year.

“When I took over last year it took over, it was here and we didn’t have enough numbers.

“It’s something that we’re working hard at and believe me we got a slap in the face during the week with it because we thought we had two and it’s stalled a bit. We’ll look at it next week and hopefully get one or two in before the deadline.”

Lyttle has also urged people not to press the panic button just yet, as it’s early days.

“If we start panicking it creates a lot of negativity about the place and we don’t want that. Everyone’s disappointed, the players, fans, everyone.

“We wanted something so bad, we want to win games, certainly here we want to win games more often than not and we had two defeats here last year.

“That’s one now that’s gone away from us, and it’s something that we can’t let happen again.”