Liam Buckley on Cork City's struggles: 'We need a bigger and better fight going on'

AFTER their disappointing display against Shelbourne, Cork City sporting director Liam Buckley wants to see more fight in his side for the remainder of the season to get out of relegation trouble. 

With the transfer window closed Buckley admitted the club will be looking at free agents to aid their fight for the remainder of the campaign after going down 2-0 at home to Shels.

"It was a poor performance again we never got going. Every aspect of it was poor, to be honest. That said we have 11 games to go. We obviously are going to have to play better than that if we are going to avoid the bottom two.

“Every game is hugely important. Next week we have Shamrock Rovers. The lads drew with them earlier in the season and every game is going to be vitally important. We aren’t scrapping it out enough. We are not digging in. We need to get a bigger and better fight going on. It was just too passive this evening.

There is quite a bit of quality in the team individually but collectively we can’t play like we did. 

"We are just disappointed with the way the whole game went. We are disappointed that way we conceded the two goals, especially the first goal. The second one is a half-decent strike in fairness. It’s just the lack of chances that we are getting and the creativity in our play is something we have to get better.

SCRAPPING

“My main concern is how we are playing in general. We have had a few games where we have been much better than that but we need to get back to fighting and scrapping every single game. That is going to be the bottom line for us, and then try to improve on the phases of play or the technical side of the game. But it just passed us by again this evening.

“I firmly believe we can get out of trouble. I said that to the boys. I told them that there are still 11 games to go. That's 33 points to play for. I don’t know how many points it is going to take to stay up. We are a couple of points away from the teams above us and we have to play them. We have to dig in and get every point that we can but we have to play better. 

"You won’t get points playing like that. We have got to look at it as a staff and as a group. Everyone in our network has to look at it and say ‘how are we going to get this better’? And we will. There are things we have been working on that haven’t been implemented in the games but we have to keep on working. 

We have got to drive ourselves and make sure that there is an urgency about our game that was lacking there this evening.

“We as a group need to expect more from us. The fans have been with us all year. There were another 3,500 people here again and I’m sick with that performance because I don’t like the team that I am involved in that doesn't have the fight to give themselves the chance of getting something. We have got to get back to that and if we can get that bit of quality individually to work collectively then we have a chance that will be enough to get us out of the bottom two.

“We will be looking at free agents. We have to get one or two in to help from a group point of view.