Game passed us by: Magilton

Jim Magilton bemoaned Cliftonville’s failure to grasp the nettle in yesterday’s narrow defeat to Linfield at the Clearer Twist Stadium.

Matthew Offord’s 27th minute finish ultimately proved the difference between the teams on a day when, with the hosts largely content to sit on their one goal advantage, the Reds lacked a cutting edge going forward before the contest petered out to a drab conclusion.

“It’s a good goal but really poor from our point of view – we should have stopped it at source,” reflected Magilton on the day’s decisive moment.

“Neither keeper had an awful lot to do. It’s a really disappointing performance from us in terms of quality in the final third. It lacked intensity, it lacked quality, we didn’t give our front players enough service and I just thought we let the game pass us by instead of grabbing the game by the scruff of the neck.

“The way we finished the game against Larne on Tuesday night, we wanted to take that tempo and intensity into this game and we didn’t and that was so disappointing for us.”

Emerging from south Belfast harbouring regrets that his side didn’t find the spark that could have made the difference in a closely-contested 90 minutes, Magilton added: “In these types of games, you have moments and in those moments, you have to be clinical and you have to have a really clear picture. We got into really good positions and made the wrong choice and even in the build-up to the goal, we’re in a really good position but we’re loose in possession and then we’re tracking 80 yards to prevent. I just thought we lacked real belief in what we were attempting to do.

“We defended OK, we limited Linfield to very few chances and I think the game was a little bit to-ing and fro-ing at the start, a bit basketball, but we lacked control. I thought we were slow in our passing and weren’t purposeful enough or brave enough in terms of breaking lines with the ball.”