We lacked quality: Magilton

Jim Magilton admitted Cliftonville lacked quality in their performance against Glentoran last night.

The Reds fell to a 3-0 defeat at The Oval on what was ultimately a comfortable evening for the hosts and, while there were arguably a number of mitigating factors including a lengthy absentee list amid a demanding fixture schedule as his team finally worked through their Sports Direct Premiership backlog, the Manager did not want to lament those circumstances and instead admitted he had hoped for more from his players.

“I don’t really talk about injured players because I’m always very considerate of the player coming in and giving him the confidence to go in,” said Magilton, who lost Jonny Addis at half-time before fellow defender Luke Conlan was forced off early in the second period.

“Some lads just didn’t grasp that opportunity tonight. Once they scored, Glentoran never looked as though they were going to concede and that was the disappointment. We had a couple of early flourishes and had we taken advantage, maybe things are different.

“You have to credit Glentoran after a really tough loss for them at the weekend, they’ve bounced back and their squad allows them to do that, whereas ours at the moment doesn’t have the depth. Every lad that gets injured, it’s always a difficult one for us.

“At the end of the day, once they step over that white line to put on that shirt, the very least that we expect is a bit more quality in our play and we lacked that tonight.

“We’ve obviously had to play a lot of catch-up games in a short space of time but this was probably just one game too many for us.”