Derry City boss Declan Devine vows ‘unacceptable’ display won’t happen again

The Munster men stunned Devine’s out-of-sorts troops with two spectacular goals at the end of either half to bring the Candy Stripes crashing back down to earth at the Regional Sports Centre, following their morale-boosting win over Bohemians the previous weekend.

The City boss was far from happy with the performance and insists the players must be prepared to accept the criticism because they simply ‘didn’t turn up’ against a Blues team tipped to be among the sides battling against the drop before a ball was kicked.

“I thought we were slow to start the game and to be honest, we didn’t get much better as the game progressed,” he said bluntly. “When we take the pats on the back, we have to take the criticisms as well. It was a bad night for us.

“We have to make sure we dust ourselves down, learn from it and don’t let it happen again. I’ve got to make sure when we get back to training we work harder and make sure performances like that don’t happen too often. We didn’t perform.

“We didn’t have enough quality throughout the course of the game. The way we want to play, it was unrecognisable. To be fair to Waterford and Alan (Reynolds), they’ve put it up it us but we’re disappointed in ourselves and for the fans who made a big effort to come down here.

“We were very disappointing from start to finish. We didn’t have the intelligence to see out the game, pick up a point.

“It wasn’t acceptable and I’m as much to blame as anyone else.

“That’s two defeats in four so we’ve got to learn very quickly. That performance wasn’t acceptable!”