Devine - Derry players gave it their all

Declan Devine left the Brandywell on Thursday night with a strange concoction of feelings rummaging in his mind.

A 2-0 home defeat, ordinarily, would have the Derry City manager tearing the paint from the walls, but this was a reversal against Turkish giants Trabzonspor, on a night when Derry were well beaten but far from either being disgraced or outclassed.
 

"I'll go home disappointed, but positive," said Devine.

"It was a very harsh result.

"I felt that, for most of the game, we passed the ball as well as they did. The one thing you have to learn at this level is that if you make one half of a mistake you'll get punished."
 

Chasing a 4-2 deficit following last week's first leg in Trabzon, Derry knew what they had to do - and were out in front early on. While there were no clear-cut chances, Ruaidhri Higgins did have two headers saved by Onur Kivrak and it took an interception by Mustafa Yumlu to clear the lines when Simon Madden was homing in for a header.
 

Brazilian Paulo Henrique finally burst the dam in the 56th minute - but Derry, to their eternal credit, didn't give up the fight.
 

Devine said: "If we had got the first goal you might have seen them wobble, but conceding the first goal was always going to be a hammer blow for us. I still felt we pushed on to win the match.
 

"We started the match on the front foot, we passed the ball well and got bodies forward. Full credit to everyone involved. We were playing against top level opposition, but we really tried to win the match."
 

After Henrique fired the Turks ahead, Derry were relived not to have been on the wrong end of a tanking by the hour mark having survived by the skins of their teeth on three occasions.
 

Twice in the final ten minutes - through Henrique again and Abdulkadir Ozdemir - Trabzonspor netted to put a gloss on it.
 

Devine said: "The players have given it everything. They're spending €1m a week on wages and we're spending peanuts compared to that. We wouldn't have that in two years.

"In terms of the effort and commitment, some of the football we played is a credit to the players.
 

"We had seven or eight players playing in Europe for the first time and playing against a team that probably has ambitions of winning the trophy.

"For long periods of the match we were in control, but if you switch off you'll get punished."
 

IFK Gothenburg, PSG and CSKA Sofia had all departed the Brandywell without victory in the last decade, but Trabzonspor broke Derry's resistance.
 

Still, there was much to admire about Derry, who deployed Ryan McBride's physicality to protect Barry Molloy and Ruaidhri Higgins with Barry McNamee's creativity left out.
 

As he begins to plot again an assault on the League title, Devine could be encouraged.
 

He said: "Ruaidhri Higgins, Barry Molloy and Ryan McBride, our three central midfield players, were outstanding.
 

"We need competition for places and I think tonight we had players on the bench who were unlucky not to be in the starting line-up. That's the way we need it to be because we need to freshen up.
"We aren't into moral victories, but we tried our best and it wasn't enough. I can certainly say that I'm proud of my players.
 

"If we can take the form we showed in these games into the League then nothing should scare us."