Colin Healy left frustrated by Cork City's display in home loss to Shels

CORK City manager Colin Healy felt his side’s performance against Shelbourne wasn’t good enough after they lost 2-0 on Friday. 

After impressive displays against Shamrock Rovers and Sligo Rovers in their previous two outings while scoring six goals, City underwhelmed against Shels, and rarely troubled the visitors.

"I thought it was a poor performance. Their goal in the first half was very easy. We didn’t defend the cross. We haven’t cleared the ball and it’s gone in off of Josh’s (Honohan) head, other than that they didn’t have many chances in the first half. We had a great chance through Barry Coffey, but when you get in there, you have to hit the target.

“Second half the lads didn’t come out. They started very well. It led them to have three or four phases of the ball and they caught us out wide. 

"But then again, you still need to track the runners in the middle of the park. Jack Moylan gets an easy chance at the edge of the box and it’s too easy. They were the chances that they had. Other than that they didn’t have too many chances. But we need to be better for both goals. 

"Like I said, we don’t track runners for the second goal, and players have to track their runners and not let opponents run off them. On our side; it’s very disappointing to give away such easy goals especially when we have to work so hard for the goals that we have scored this season.

“We had chances. I thought we should have had a penalty. You saw up in Sligo, we were got one given against us, and I felt we should have had one here tonight. Obviously, we never got it. But I just thought the quality probably wasn’t there. 

I understand because they were playing with a back-five that it can sometimes be hard to get space but I just felt we didn’t look after the ball as well as we should have done.

“They were very compact. But we knew that. We knew that all week. We went over everything with the players. We knew we could get at them in wider areas of their midfield. We knew that we could get it and we could get in behind. 

WELL DRILLED

"But when we did that, we didn’t look after the ball. They are well drilled and all of that kind of stuff but I still thought we caused them trouble and created chances when we did go direct to Keats (Ruairi Keating) and got runners off him but it was just one of those nights and it was very very disappointing.” 

Despite City’s lacklustre performance, they did have opportunities; Healy felt that Coffey’s chance on the stroke of half-time was a pivotal moment.

“It was a great chance. And Barry knows that. We have seen what he has done before. He knows you have to be ruthless when you get an opportunity like that, especially at this level. I thought there were opportunities when we could have got the ball into the box but we didn’t, we just kept going side to side. 

"First half I thought we did okay. We kept the ball, but we knew we could cause them trouble with the ball in behind them and we didn’t do that enough. I think Matt Healy put one down the side for Keats and Ally (Gilchrist) put another one down the side. We caused them trouble at times but not enough. I just don’t think the quality was great.”