Rut patrol

Paddy McLaughlin acknowledges that the routine that Cliftonville have found themselves in of late has to be addressed.

The Reds’ recent slump continued with yesterday’s 2-0 reverse at the hands of Coleraine at Solitude and, while admitting to fragile confidence within his team, McLaughlin says that it’s his job to get things back on track.

“As the first-half wore on and we started to player better and better, I felt like we were getting there,” he reflects.

“It felt like the goal was coming. We had a couple of chances at the end of the first-half and then the keeper’s made a great save from Ryan Curran but then the nature of the goal we’ve conceded – the sub comes on, walks into the box, nobody picks him up – that’s just not good enough.

“The second goal is then down to an individual error and we can’t keep going on like that. When you’re not putting the ball in the net at one end and you’re soft defensively, that’s no combination to win football matches.

“When that first goal goes in, it deflates the whole team but we need to react better than that. It’s happened a few times this season where we’ve conceded the first goal and confidence has gone and heads have dropped but we need to deal with it or else what would happen if we went 1-0 down in the first few minutes? It can’t just be game over. You can’t let it affect you like that.

“It’s a confidence thing and when you’re on a bad run, your confidence can take a hit. As the Manager, I take responsibility for results. I know the criticism will come my way, I understand that and I accept that but I can’t give the players confidence, I can’t coach them confidence, we can’t provide confidence on the training pitch. The only way they can get it back is to put the work in and keep plugging away at it until we turn the corner.

“We’ve now got a break without any matches over Christmas, so we’ll use that to talk things through and work on what’s been going wrong together as a group. Hopefully we can iron a few things out, give some injured players time to heal and return with much better performances when we do come back.”

With football’s upcoming shutdown bringing the January Transfer Window into much sharper focus, McLaughlin revealed he is keen to “freshen things up” in the weeks ahead.

“We have good bunch of lads here and it would be a shame to break this group up, but we’re not here to be a good bunch of lads – we’re here to win games and be successful and that’s not happening,” he added.

“We’re not in a position where we can just go and open the chequebook so any players that do come in will probably mean boys heading out the door at the other end to balance things up.

“None of us want it to come to that but we can’t just keep on being frustrated at losing games. We can’t keep sending ourselves and our supporters home unhappy every other week, we can’t stay in this routine because this is Cliftonville – this Club’s far too big and important for that. It matters to too many people.

“We have to do something about it, so we’ll try and freshen things up to try and give us the lift we need.”