Brian Gartland - We're gutted, but we'll move on

In the aftermath of Thursday night’s agonising 2-1 defeat to Zenit St. Petersburg, Dundalk defender Brian Gartland spoke with extratime.ie.

“We’re gutted. When you go ahead with them not having created many chances we were thinking that we have a great chance of getting the three points here never mind a point.

“There a top, top side who got into the last 16 of the Champions League last season but I thought we were excellent when we had the ball and we counter-attacked really well. The lads were lively going forward, Robbie got the goal and a few other boys could have had some on another night.”

Last night was Dundalk’s seventh game in gruelling 18-day period. However, typical of the man, Gartland didn’t hold the amount of games as an excuse for last night’s defeat despite admitting that it has been a tough schedule physically.

“You could put it down to tiredness, but we just have to take it and move on. It’s not so much this game that fatigue comes in, it’s the last month or two months where we have been playing every three days, you start to feel it and particularly now in games like this when you’re shadowing the ball for periods of the game.”

Dane Massey almost put the Lilywhites two goals to the good before Zenit took control. Had that effort went in Dundalk could well be reflecting back upon another memorable Thursday night in Europe. Gartland though dismissed the notion that that moment was the turning point in the game as Zenit seemed to click into gear in its aftermath.

“It wouldn’t have been a turning point if we didn’t concede. You could pick any point in the game and say it was the turning point. Goals chance games and it was just unlucky that it didn’t fall to one of us and it would have been a tap-in.”

With the return leg scheduled for November 3rd, Gartland believes that the approach from both sides will be different, especially with Dundalk having a more extended break between their final league game and Thursday week.

“It’s a different game out there. Russian teams are different at home than they are away from home. We have important games coming up before then and I’m sure next week the gaffer will start thinking about the plan for the away game and we’ll know then.”

The Lilywhites have supposedly been in the midst of an injury crisis recently, despite Stephen O’Donnell being the only injury absentee from last night’s squad. Gartland though believes that they have no fresh fitness concerns ahead of Sunday’s encounter with Bohemians, a game which could see the Lilywhites tie up a third league title on the trot.

“We’re grand. We don’t take negatives; this team always take the positives. We obviously feel a bit deflated thinking that we were going to take something from the game being one-up, going into Sunday we’ll take the positives and build on the adrenalin of tonight because the league is massive for us and it’s obviously the priority.”