Five-star improvement

Jim Magilton says that Cliftonville went from “careless to clinical” in yesterday’s convincing defeat of Ballymena United.

Ahead through a wonderful long-range attempt from Shea Gordon with just five minutes on the clock, the Reds failed to build on that bright start in a largely forgettable first-half.

It was a different story after the interval, though, with Joe Gormley, Eric McWoods (2) and Ryan Curran striking to ensure a first win of the season over the Sky Blues, for whom things could have been decidedly worse with Gormley and Alex Parsons each seeing shots come back off the woodwork.

“We got off to a fantastic start with a magnificent goal and you’re thinking ‘right, let’s kick on’ and we didn’t,” reflected Magilton.

“Credit to Ballymena for that, it was a bit nip and tuck in the first-half.

“We were careless at times but from being careless to being clinical is important. We utilised our bench and they were all fantastic when they came on — the same as Tuesday night away to Carrick.

“Competition is great and that’s what we want, but we also want those players that are sitting watching the game to come on and make that impact and I thought they did that superbly well.”

Despite suffering defeats in all four prior meetings with the Braidmen this season, Magilton insists he took no extra satisfaction from earning three points on this occasion.

“My first thought is always around our performance levels and Ballymena have been better than us in most of those games, so we had to take our medicine,” he added.

“We were at home, we’re trying to get momentum, we’ve still so much to play for and it was an important message to the players in the changing room that on our day, we can play to a level.

“Ballymena have been outstanding at times this year and we had to turn up and play in the manner in which we played. That was an important statement from us.”