Paul McMullan keen to end Derry City's mini goal drought

​It's been either a feast or a famine in the goalscoring department for Derry City lately and McMullan shares the fans' frustrations with the club's latest dry spell which ultimately ended their title tilt.

The fact the Candy Stripes have no one in the top six of the leading goalscorers chart given their lofty position in the league table and no one in double figures tells its own story.

Derry have failed to score in three of their last four games and must rediscover their shooting boots in Cork tonight if they're to cement their place in Europe next season.

Former Dundee winger, McMullan has yet to open his account for the Candy Stripes since joining the club last July but he's been a key player in supplying the ammunition for his fellow forwards.

Ruaidhri Higgins believes the team has lacked a ruthlessness to their game this season but McMullan reckons there should be no problem finding the net for a team that's brimming with attacking options.

"I'm not too bothered about who scores the goals to be honest with you, as long as we win it doesn't bother me," said the Scotsman. "It would be nice to score, of course, but that's not something that bothers me at all if we're winning.

"There shouldn't be any games where we're going out and not scoring any goals given the quality we've got in the top end and that's what's been annoying. We'll (forward players) take responsibility for that because you get all the credit when the goals are flying in and when the goals aren't flying in it's up to us to create chances and take our chances and we haven't done that in the last couple of weeks.

"Hopefully that all changes this weekend and we can put in a good couple of games to finish the season."

That inconsistency in front of the posts has irked City boss Higgins and he's called for his players to be more clinical.

"It's been like this year where we've gone on spells where we've scored goals and we've had periods when we haven't," said Higgins. "I don't see last week (against Shelbourne) as being a real disappointment from that end because we were a man down for 70 minutes but the previous game against Drogheda, in the second half we had chances to score.

"People say the hardest thing to do is create chances but we more often than not create decent numbers of chances but we just need that ruthless edge to get us over the line."

McMullan is hoping he can make a difference in that department as he takes on Cork for the first time. He's prepared to shoulder some of the blame as an attacking player but there was little he could do last week in the stalemate against Shelbourne.

"You try to win every game. It has tailed off a little bit in terms of results-wise but I think in pretty much all the games, other than the other night (against Shelbourne) when we had 10 men for 70 odd minutes, we should've won the games.

"That's probably on the guys in the forward areas who have got to take their chances and turn that one point into three points. Unfortunately we haven't done that and we have to do that for the next couple of games.”