Riga coach Sandro Perkovic remains cautious ahead of Derry City's visit to Latvia

It was a polished away performance produced by Riga who scored twice either side of Matty Smith's harsh sending off and crashed a shot off the crossbar in the last action of the match.

That stoppage time strike from Ukrainian substitute Vladlen Yurchenko which clipped the crossbar before striking the post would've signalled the end of Derry's European adventure at the first stage but at 2-0, there remains hope for Ruaidhri Higgins who was defiant in his post match interviews.

It's been exactly one month since 38 year-old Croatian, Perkovic's appointment as Riga boss but he was well versed on Derry and felt the match pretty much went as expected.

"First of all congratulations to my players, it was a very important win for us in a great atmosphere in Derry," said Perkovic. "I think our win was well deserved. We were slightly the better team. The game was as we expected.

"There were a lot of long balls and most of the time we controlled the situation on the pitch. Unfortunately this last shot wasn't in the goal because it would be much better for us if the game was 3-0 but it doesn't change too much."

With the away goal rule no longer applied in the competition, Perkovic is wary of looking beyond the second leg of the fixture and claims 'nothing is finished'.

"The tie is still open and everything will be done in seven days," he added. "There are no more away goal rules so everything is still open. Derry showed they can be very dangerous. They have some real quality players and our approach to the game will be completely the same if it's 0-0 or now after this. This is only the first 90 minutes. We have 90 more minutes and we will be ready for that.

"They did nothing to surprise us," he continued. "Our coaching staff did well analysing them and they did very well. They (Derry) have our respect. They didn't surprise us but they showed us qualities they have. We were lucky today that they didn't score. They had a few situations to score a goal. We know they are very strong in duels and make excellent counter attacks and are very dangerous in set pieces. We prepared ourselves for that and luckily we were successful.

"As I said, everything is open. Nothing is finished and we will prepare ourselves like it's 0-0 and start the game from this point."

Derry had been beginning to build momentum with the match still in the balance at 1-0 before Smith was shown red. Perkovic said he was too far from the action to make a call on the decision by the referee which ultimately handed full control to Riga.

"To be honest I didn't see it," he claimed. "I saw a lot of players were there and saw something happened but honestly I didn't see it so I must check the video but of course this red card helped us for the last 25 minutes to control the game even better. The red card made it much easier to play here."

It's Riga's ambition to reach the group stages of the competition but Perkovic isn't looking too far ahead with plenty of work to be done in the second leg.

"The group stages are far, far away. We go step by step. I came one month ago and we were not in the best condition. Guys are working really hard but this is a process where we need some time to be where we want to be, If this is to be the groups stages then nobody would be more happy than we are."