Boss targets quality control

Jim Magilton says tomorrow’s Sports Direct Premiership clash with Glentoran requires Cliftonville to summon up the spirit that carried them to St Stephen’s Day Derby success in midweek.

The Reds boss acknowledged his side’s performance in Tuesday’s victory over Crusaders was not at the same levels they had previously demonstrated, but was delighted with the heart and work rate his men showed to get over the line – and says they’ll need to marry a similar approach with better standards on the ball at The Oval this weekend.

“It’s another big challenge and one that will require a bit of everything we’ve seen – we’ll need guts and courage but we must also show quality,” he says.

“Something we always talk about is performance levels and if I had one criticism of the Crusaders game, it’s that we weren’t as good on the ball as we can be. That will need to be different against the Glens of we’re going to go to The Oval and get anything.

“We’ve prepared well and we’re ready for the game but it’s easy to stand in front of players and tell them what to do, or stand on the sidelines giving out this order and that order, but at the end of the day, it’s about the players having the courage to go out and do it.

“Different matches present different kinds of challenges, we saw that on Tuesday and we had to deal with it a different way. There was a real collective effort where we’ve gone ‘right, we’re going to find a way of winning this’ and, full credit to the players, they stuck to their job and showed a willingness to keep at it.

“Our games with Glentoran have been very, very tight this season and there’s no reason to expect that this one will be any different, but one thing that does need to change is that we have to be better because the Glens are a team full of quality players and you can’t afford to be off it against them.”

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