Russell rues lack of goals

After his side had gone down by a single goal to Bray Wanderers on Friday night, manager Martin Russell spoke to extratime about his disappointment and the fact that his team had, yet again, played ninety minutes of football without finding the back of the net.

“We need goals. But we haven’t managed to do that so what can you do? You’ve got to just keep working and keep a certain amount of patience as well because we’ve got a younger squad. Tonight against Bray we got hurt at set plays. We are a little bit vulnerable and it doesn’t take somebody too long in the game to see that.”

It was a game that offered little in the opening half but after the break both teams began to produce better football and Russell’s frustration was compounded by the fact that Bray’s match winning goal, a Danny O’Connor header from a Joe Kendrick free kick, came at a time when his players were starting to find their way.

“It was a funny game, we probably had our best spell in the second half and that’s when they got the goal. It can be frustrating. You could argue that over the whole game we probably didn’t deserve to be beaten but we’ve got to, particularly at set plays, not make it easy for the opposition.”

But perhaps the most unfortunate aspect to UCD’s current situation is that a side who’s biggest asset is there ability to pass the ball around find themselves playing on, possibly, one of the worst pitches in the league. Chopped up by the demands of hosting UCD’s rugby team, even heavy sanding could not disguise the poor quality of the playing surface on Friday night.

“We were a little bit unfortunate at times, Robbie Creevy tried to get the ball out from under his feet in the box and the pitch [worked against us]. We feel we need to have a better pitch to move the ball. Maybe on a better pitch Robbie would have got a better touch and that could have been an equaliser, you know. We’re finding it hard to get a goal at the moment but we’ll keep trying.”

On a brighter note, Yael Haro the Spanish defender signed from Drogheda United during the winter, came on in the latter stages of the game and made a considerable impact as an emergency striker. Asked what had led him to try Haro at the opposite end of the pitch, Russell insisted that the decision was not just down to Haro’s physical qualities.

“It’s not just his size. I’ll tell you what he has got, he has a tremendous strike of the ball. When you get him around the box in training he’s finding the back of the net for fun because he’s such a good striker of the ball. And when you’re trying everything you’re looking at someone who’s not afraid to have a dig. So I felt if we got enough [ball] to him around the box that there would have been strikes on goal which would have been an avenue to score. He’s got a hell of a left foot and, because we’re not flushed with strikers at the moment, we’ll look at all those options. He gives a little bit of presence as well and he has a striker’s instinct in that he wants to get a shot off. I just felt that we needed somebody like that up there. It didn’t happen tonight but we’ll see what happens in the future.”