Givens left disappointed

Don Givens was left disappointed after last night's defeat to Turkey at Turners Cross. The Irish played well in parts but some poor defensive errors resulted in a 3-0 defeat at the hands of the group’s top seed.

“It’s difficult to think we lost that match three-nil,” said Givens after the game. “The first two goals were presents and then we missed lots of chance. The positive thing to take out of it is we had five or six chances against the top seeds. We’ve had more chances than them, as crazy as it seems with a 3-0 defeat. There are lots of positives that we got into those positions but maybe similar to the England game it reads badly.

“You make the mistake and you get smacked in the backside, it was a disappointing match but there was a lot of good stuff and positive stuff because we created some good chances. But they don’t give you any points for creating chances unfortunately.”

The Irish spurned several good chances in the opening period but after two defensive errors, the first a complete misjudgement from Eddie Nolan, went in at the break two goals to the arrears.

“You can’t be angry, nobody makes mistakes on purpose and nobody misses chances on purpose. You have to try and say to them that there’s not going to be a million chances out there and you have to put one of them in. The two central defenders, I didn’t think they were brilliant for them but it didn’t happen.

Givens acted quickly, bringing off David Meyler for James McCarthy during the break and the change resulted in some good pressure for the Irish at the beginning of the first half.

“I felt David wasn’t at the level he was at during the other games and he was giving the ball away a lot, so I said I’d change it and bring James on. He did settle in well and gave us something in the second half.

“The boys are very down obviously. There was lots of decent stuff in the performance. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb though, with a couple of mistakes,” added Givens, who found it hard to believe that his side had lost by such a margin.

“Hopefully we will go on from here and get the thing on track. Somebody reading that scoreline would think we’ve got a hiding but we know that we haven’t got a hiding. I thought we had sorted it out, so much in that we’ve stopped giving away silly goals and things like that, but, there you go, it happened. We’ve got to be more professional in not giving them away and must be more clinical when we get chances.”

Cillian Sheridan in particular missed a host of good chances in both halves and if just one of those had gone in, the game might have been entirely different for the young boys in green.

“They weren’t half-chances tonight, they were really good chances. No faulting the lads for the effort,” said Givens. “Cillian had a few but I’ve been there myself. As I’ve already said, you don’t miss them on purpose. If his first half header had gone in we would have been back to 1-1 and it’s a whole different game.”

To get off to a bad start at home meant that the Irish will now face an uphill battle to qualify for Denmark in two years time and they now have a long wait until their second game, a trip to Estonia in the Autumn.

“Obviously to lose a home game puts us into a difficult position. If the result had gone the other way tonight you’re kind of thinking, off and flying. There’s a lot of games to go and we’ll give it our best shot every time,” concluded Givens.