McCaffrey disgusted by flat display

Dundalk went down to a disappointing defeat to Bohemians at Oriel Park on Friday night and speaking to ExtraTime.ie, manager Sean McCaffrey was shocked by his sides performance.

"Shocking performance. To go up to Derry and do as well as we did and then to play like this tonight is just shocking. We were without three key players but that's no excuse for lack of desire, lack of effort, lack of passion. They were brutal in the first-half. Second-half they tried harder but it's a very poor performance, a very disappointing performance against, let's face it, a very average Bohs' team."

McCaffrey then said he felt "disgusted" by his sides performance and he watched on in disbelief.

"I feel disgusted. That's being perfectly honest about it. We did miss Liam Burns, Chris Shields and Derek Foran but that's no excuse for it. We were so poor. I can't believe what I just saw out there. It was terrible."

From early on, it was clear to the Lilywhites boss that it was going to be a long night and branded his sides performance as "flat".

"I don't know what went wrong after last week. I knew it after five minutes. We were just so flat. There was no bite, no energy, no appetite for it. We were second to everything, we were standing off, we were defending too deep, we weren't supporting the front men - just an awful performance."

With the Lilywhites missing three key players, including their captain Chris Shields, McCaffrey conceded that the team need their strongest team on the pitch at all times.

"We need to have our strongest team on the pitch at all times. I think there was eight teenagers started on the pitch tonight. Although that was the same story on the pitch last week, we still had Chris Shields and Liam Burns on the pitch for a while.

"It just shows you one player can make an awful difference."

With the lead up of the game being dominated by rumours of cut backs at Oriel Park, McCaffrey insisted that it wasn't playing on the players' minds going into the game, instead putting it down to inconsistency.

"No, it didn't. The club has spent a lot of money. There are cut backs needed. Ticket sales are down, season ticket sales are down. The money's not there. We have to persevere with what we have.

"The problem with young players, they are famously inconsistent. We had no leadership on the pitch tonight. No Liam Burns, no Chris Shields, no Derek Foran to shackle them and do the jobs, read the game for them. That was it, from start to finish."