Peter Cherrie wants feel good factor back at Derry City

The ex-Cork City net-minder, who has been in superb form this season, admits he’ll have a word with young players like David Parkhouse and Aidy Delap following their scoreless draw against the Students.

The duo had great chances to score the decisive goal against Collie O’Neill’s side but lacked the neccesary composure. However, Cherrie has full faith that the young Derry squad can make amends. Derry have drawn three out of their last four games and Cherrie believes some of those draws could have been victories.

“Those draws could have been wins and it’s up to us to get back to the training field and rectify that,” he insisted. “We have to start scoring a few goals and get the boys back feeling good, come into training with a smile on their face, because I know on Saturday they would have been a bit doom and gloom, but we just have to lift them.

“The likes of myself and Ciaran Coll, the more experienced players will have to lift the boys and tell them, listen it’s a point in the end, it’s a clean-sheet and we move on.

“We came back in on Sunday morning with a smile, because no one was allowed to feel down in the dumps. Myself, Ciaran and Greg Sloggett didn’t let that happen and it was business as usual when we came back in.

“It’s a frustrating one to take, as we created a lot of chances, which we didn’t take and on another night we could have scored six or seven, but listen we created the chances that’s the main thing and we just have to convert them next time.

“I think sometimes the young lads are a bit like a rabbit looking at the headlights, they try to rush things and you just have to tell them to calm down, it’s your job, relax a wee bit and I’ll put my arm around them to try and calm them down as much as possible and hopefully against Sligo, if they get chances they’ll finish them.”

The 35-year-old was happy to keep his second clean-sheet from Derry’s last three games against UCD and he’ll take that as a positive from last Friday evening’s encounter at the Brandywell, but he wants to get back to winning ways against Liam Buckley’s side this week.

“The positive is we kept a clean-sheet and didn’t get beat,” he explained. “But as we had so many chances, the only positive we can take is that we are creating them and as I said on another day, they go into the back of the net, but listen we move onto next week.

“We knew what we are going to come up against this evening, Decky had his homework done on them. We treat every single team the same, we did the homework and we knew it would be tough as they are a good footballing side.

“It’s another home game for us next week against Sligo, with another massive crowd, in front of our own fans it’s up to us to come out and say OK this week it maybe wasn’t good enough, but hopefully if we get similar chances next week we’ll take them against Sligo.”