Robbie Benson: We've been unlucky in the group

Robbie Benson was typically honest in his post-match assessment of where Dundalk’s European campaign lies when chatting with Extratime.ie reporter Tom O’Connor.

“We’re obviously all disappointed that we didn’t really test the keeper at all and because we didn’t get something from the game tonight, it’s now out of our hands with AZ in pole position but we’ll regroup and we believe that it’s still all to play for.

“We weren’t sharp enough and I suppose the drawback is that by the time we get to this stage our season is over and they’re in peak-season so it may be something that we’ll have to look at but that’s all the rust out now and we’ll look forward to a good week’s training next week and get prepared for Israel.

“It (the opening 15 minutes) was probably our worst spell in our whole European group stage phase. We didn’t deal with the cross for the goal well but I suppose we did better up the pitch as the first-half progressed but we didn’t test the keeper. I suppose on some occasions if we had have gotten a better break of the ball something might have happened but it’s kind of been the story of our whole group.”

It seems as if the Lilywhites have struggled to get the rub of the green in Group D this season, losing their last three by a solitary goal. This could well be something that could have the Dundalk players looking back on what could have been should they not progress.

Still, Benson is confident of Zenit doing them a favour by beating AZ which would offer Dundalk the lifeline they require in Tel-Aviv.

“It was the width of the post against Zenit here and Patrick (McEleney) hit the cross bar over there so these things all tally up in the end. Zenit put out a very strong team today despite being qualified already and we’ll be reliant on them doing the same in Holland in two weeks.”

And although Dundalk will have been disappointed with the loss to Zenit, the fact the Lilywhites can still qualify means they’re on track to meet their goal.

“If you told us at the start of the year that we’d be going to Israel with a chance of qualifying we would certainly have taken it."