Lilywhites have no time to lick wounds
Credit:
Extratime caught up with Dundalk Assistant Manager Wayne Hatswell upon
their return from Bulgaria after their 6-0 drubbing at the hands of
Levski Sofia. He was honest and magnanimous in his assessment of the
Co Louth team's trip to the Bulgarian capital.
We asked how the beating and the long journey had taken it out of the team: “Still suffering, morale could be better, we’ve shipped in a lot of goals lately and the lads are feeling a bit sorry for themselves. We’ve had a lot of games and things like that but you’ve got to keep picking yourself up haven’t you?
"Its tough at the moment for us, we’re trying to get some rest in and try not to let it affect us too much really. We were in training today just trying to get the lads back smiling again doing a few fun sessions, that’s as good as we can do at the moment to instill a bit of belief back into ourselves. Hopefully we can get back on track and get a few points back on board. I’ve played this morning (in training) and I know how tough it’s been for the lads. It’s hard at my age, there’s no respite that’s for sure. There’s another one around the corner tomorrow, we got back at midnight last night and you think 'I’ve got to prepare for another game in a minute'.”
Levski Sofia lived up to their billing as European footballing royalty, how did Wayne feel the gap between the clubs expressed itself: “Their budget is something like €8m a year, when we went over there we knew it was going to be very difficult albeit we didn’t want to go over there and get embarrassed, but we have.
"You can give excuses but at the end of the day they were just far superior to us, they should easily get to the group stages. We’ve played a lot of games, even their players were laughing about it – well they didn’t laugh, they felt sorry for us I think, they said something like “You play 6 games in 2 weeks, no, no, no, why?”
The Bulgarians certainly didn’t look like a team in pre season and were very quick to close down all over the park. “They did their homework on us, they knew we were tired, it’s probably not the European style but once we gained the ball they pressed us. They were fit, fresh and although it’s their preseason when you look at them they do look after themselves and when you’re paid that much money they have to. It was a humid night again, it wouldn’t have mattered if we had kicked off at 1 o’clock in the morning it still would have been warm, it was just tough,” said Wayne.
Dundalk have conceded 20 goals in their last 7 games and it this is causing Wayne and Ian Foster some concern. “We gave a few sloppy goals away and that’s what we’re trying to address more than anything, no matter what standard you play against we felt that we should have done better on a few of the goals.
“You never know, if we could have just kept it to 0-0 for longer and just got to half time at maybe 1-0 it might have been a lot different. That was probably the game plan but it just didn’t quite work. The third goal killed everybody really, right on the stroke of half time that hurt us, the heads went down a bit and we thought this is going to be a long night.”
Even at such a dark time the Swindon native found reasons for optimism. “Taking the positives out of it, we looked a major threat from set pieces – we looked like scoring every time we got a free kick, you never know we might be able to get 7 free kicks on Thursday.
“We had them on the ropes on that and we knew we would, we knew that was the one thing we had a chance on. It was ironic that we conceded from a set piece, that’s what we’re more disappointed with of late. You’ve got to try and stick with runners and it has a knock on effect that if you don’t stick with the runners initially, it can come and hurt you. We felt that on a couple of the goals, we can make excuses with the amount of games that we’ve had and with the trip and the travel it’s just tough at times that’s all I can say.”
A lot of teams would have gone away determined to shut up shop and try to get back home with the tie still in the balance. Dundalk did set up slightly differently to try to keep the match tight, Wayne spelled out the change: “We had Tom (Miller) sitting in front of us, which made it five [in defence]. It was his job to sit and protect us but the pitch was so big and they had great movement and one of the centre forwards just kept dropping back in (to the hole).
“They all took it in turns which was very difficult to pick up, which hurt us. We had [Neale] Fenny up front but we couldn’t get the ball to him and we couldn’t get the help and support to him. They pressed us throughout and they never made anything easy for us. In Grevenmacher they let us have it and we let them have it, it was case of we had to let them [Levski] have it as we just couldn’t get close to them, but they put us under pressure as soon as we had the ball. The manner of the goals wasn’t great for us, We might have been able to change the game plan for the second half if we were just 1-0 down and maybe just try to go defensive after that.”
The draw for the third qualifying round has been fairly kind with a tie against either Dacia or Kalmar awaiting the winners. Had Wayne seen the draw? “I didn’t even look who we got to be honest, somebody told me that we had some Swedish team and a Maltese outfit, I totally ignored it to be honest. It would have been nice if we’d have had that and then play Sofia in the next round. It was a great experience, you learn and it was a good learning curve for us,” he said.
So Dundalk have the tallest of tall orders on Thursday evening but even if they cannot overturn the large deficit they will be aiming to show that they won’t go down as easily again.
We asked how the beating and the long journey had taken it out of the team: “Still suffering, morale could be better, we’ve shipped in a lot of goals lately and the lads are feeling a bit sorry for themselves. We’ve had a lot of games and things like that but you’ve got to keep picking yourself up haven’t you?
"Its tough at the moment for us, we’re trying to get some rest in and try not to let it affect us too much really. We were in training today just trying to get the lads back smiling again doing a few fun sessions, that’s as good as we can do at the moment to instill a bit of belief back into ourselves. Hopefully we can get back on track and get a few points back on board. I’ve played this morning (in training) and I know how tough it’s been for the lads. It’s hard at my age, there’s no respite that’s for sure. There’s another one around the corner tomorrow, we got back at midnight last night and you think 'I’ve got to prepare for another game in a minute'.”
Levski Sofia lived up to their billing as European footballing royalty, how did Wayne feel the gap between the clubs expressed itself: “Their budget is something like €8m a year, when we went over there we knew it was going to be very difficult albeit we didn’t want to go over there and get embarrassed, but we have.
"You can give excuses but at the end of the day they were just far superior to us, they should easily get to the group stages. We’ve played a lot of games, even their players were laughing about it – well they didn’t laugh, they felt sorry for us I think, they said something like “You play 6 games in 2 weeks, no, no, no, why?”
The Bulgarians certainly didn’t look like a team in pre season and were very quick to close down all over the park. “They did their homework on us, they knew we were tired, it’s probably not the European style but once we gained the ball they pressed us. They were fit, fresh and although it’s their preseason when you look at them they do look after themselves and when you’re paid that much money they have to. It was a humid night again, it wouldn’t have mattered if we had kicked off at 1 o’clock in the morning it still would have been warm, it was just tough,” said Wayne.
Dundalk have conceded 20 goals in their last 7 games and it this is causing Wayne and Ian Foster some concern. “We gave a few sloppy goals away and that’s what we’re trying to address more than anything, no matter what standard you play against we felt that we should have done better on a few of the goals.
“You never know, if we could have just kept it to 0-0 for longer and just got to half time at maybe 1-0 it might have been a lot different. That was probably the game plan but it just didn’t quite work. The third goal killed everybody really, right on the stroke of half time that hurt us, the heads went down a bit and we thought this is going to be a long night.”
Even at such a dark time the Swindon native found reasons for optimism. “Taking the positives out of it, we looked a major threat from set pieces – we looked like scoring every time we got a free kick, you never know we might be able to get 7 free kicks on Thursday.
“We had them on the ropes on that and we knew we would, we knew that was the one thing we had a chance on. It was ironic that we conceded from a set piece, that’s what we’re more disappointed with of late. You’ve got to try and stick with runners and it has a knock on effect that if you don’t stick with the runners initially, it can come and hurt you. We felt that on a couple of the goals, we can make excuses with the amount of games that we’ve had and with the trip and the travel it’s just tough at times that’s all I can say.”
A lot of teams would have gone away determined to shut up shop and try to get back home with the tie still in the balance. Dundalk did set up slightly differently to try to keep the match tight, Wayne spelled out the change: “We had Tom (Miller) sitting in front of us, which made it five [in defence]. It was his job to sit and protect us but the pitch was so big and they had great movement and one of the centre forwards just kept dropping back in (to the hole).
“They all took it in turns which was very difficult to pick up, which hurt us. We had [Neale] Fenny up front but we couldn’t get the ball to him and we couldn’t get the help and support to him. They pressed us throughout and they never made anything easy for us. In Grevenmacher they let us have it and we let them have it, it was case of we had to let them [Levski] have it as we just couldn’t get close to them, but they put us under pressure as soon as we had the ball. The manner of the goals wasn’t great for us, We might have been able to change the game plan for the second half if we were just 1-0 down and maybe just try to go defensive after that.”
The draw for the third qualifying round has been fairly kind with a tie against either Dacia or Kalmar awaiting the winners. Had Wayne seen the draw? “I didn’t even look who we got to be honest, somebody told me that we had some Swedish team and a Maltese outfit, I totally ignored it to be honest. It would have been nice if we’d have had that and then play Sofia in the next round. It was a great experience, you learn and it was a good learning curve for us,” he said.
So Dundalk have the tallest of tall orders on Thursday evening but even if they cannot overturn the large deficit they will be aiming to show that they won’t go down as easily again.
