Derry City’s Gerard Doherty hasn’t got a win under his belt since he took over the captaincy from the late Ryan McBride last month and before Saturday night’s clash with Sligo Rovers Doherty knows it will be the case of trying to get that elusive win
Derry City’s Gerard Doherty hasn’t got a win under his belt since he took over the captaincy from the late Ryan McBride last month and before Saturday night’s clash with Sligo Rovers Doherty knows it will be the case of trying to get that elusive win.
“Yeah that’s it, we are trying to get the monkey off our back the last few weeks,” Doherty said.
“We all know how important the game but to be honest every game is important now and I think from the league cup game, I know we got beat, but there was definitely a better performance on the night.
“We are looking forward to getting down to Sligo and playing this match now,” Doherty said. “We have trained well there the last couple of days and we’ve maybe changed it up slightly, but we can only go down there and try our best and see what happens.”
Sligo Rovers, who are still without a manager, could go one point behind the Candystripes with a win.
“It’s massive for both teams,” Doherty explained. “They can catch up, but we have a couple of games in hands and we are looking to get points on the board as quick as possible and start looking up again.
“As we all know the last month hasn’t been good enough performance wise and results wise, but I have a feeling were one performance away from turning it around it again.”
The Candystripes have been plagued with injuries in recent weeks and go into the game still without Barry McNamee and star striker Rory Patterson and Doherty knows the team has to pull together now more than ever.
“I can’t get caught up in goal scoring and the goal scorers can’t get caught up in the clean sheets and maybe that has been happening in the last couple of weeks or whatever,” he added.
“We had a few meetings in the last couple of days and it looks like we are more focused and to be honest a clean sheet is always top of my agenda going into the game and we see what happens from then.
“I think that is what we were doing at the start of the season, we were being solid you just have to look at Dundalk and (Shamrock) Rovers hardly any shots on goal, shots on target.
“So we definitely have to be hard to beat and we know we have quality up top as well and they can cause havoc whenever they are on their game, but it’s just finding that balance now and everybody being on their game at the same time.”
