'Let's get back on the horse and get ready for Europe!'

​Last Thursday's hugely frustrating 2-1 loss against Sligo Rovers put a dent in Derry's chances of bridging that gap as Shelbourne edged three points ahead with a game in hand.

The league title chase takes a break to accommodate those teams involved in European competition and when it resumes Derry will have just 11 games remaining to overturn that deficit.

Connolly believes Derry won't be far away when the trophy is handed out at the end of the season.

"We're extremely disappointed with the result and how the game finished but we're three points off the top at the moment going into Europe and we're in a good situation," he stressed.

"We're also getting boys back who are getting more minutes and they will all need to be used in the coming weeks with the cup game and Europe coming up. Once they're over we get back to the league and have 11 games left and in a good position to go for it and give it a right go and I don't think we'll be far away."

Two defensive lapses allowed Sligo to come from behind as Ellis Chapman scored from the penalty spot before firing past Brian Maher with his second late on.

It was two avoidable goals and Connolly felt Derry didn't get what they deserved.

"Until we scored the goal I thought we were actually really good and controlled the game massively. They didn't really create anything and we actually played some really good stuff and had some good spells in the game.

"We probably had a few chances we could've done better with but once we scored the goal we came off it which isn't like us. When they got the penalty a bit of confidence dropped but at no stage did I feel we were going to lose the game.

How it ended up was disappointing to say the least but we just have to move on, dust ourselves down and we know stuff we need to be better at but there were large parts of the game where I felt we did really well and played good football. It's just a matter of getting back on the horse and going again.

"Again, it's lessons we need to learn from but we dust ourselves down and get ready for Europe."