Carlyle blasts ‘blase’ ’Stute

The Drumahoe club were second best throughout and although United didn’t create a host of clear cut chances, they thoroughly deserved to book their place in the next round.

“They had more endeavour, better attitude, more drive, more hunger and determination more than what we had,” insisted Carlyle.

“If I’m to be honest we had this arrogance, complacency and blase attitude and it isn’t acceptable and I told the players that after the game out on the pitch.

“This defeat has come back off two good league wins and two clean-sheets and people were thinking they have the divine right to win football matches, but lets face it on Friday night how many saves did Lawrence McCormick have to make, I think he had one from Dean (Carlyle).

“Now they defended well and because we were pushing forward they were able to catch us on the counter-attack.”

Carlyle also apologised on the players behalf to the ’Stute fans who made the trip to the Showgrounds.

“I’m disappointed for the supporters because I won’t attach myself to Friday night’s performance and I told the players that, now they all had a good chat amongst themselves and they all admitted that they all have to up the ante and have a more determined approach.

“I want to apologise to the supporters who on a Friday night drove down to Limavady and watched a performance that isn’t acceptable.

“I’m disappointed that we lost because I would have liked to have defended the Craig Memorial Cup, but it’s better to get this defeat now and hopefully we can learn from it and bounce back.”

Carlyle to his credit praised United boss Aidy McLaughlin for his teams never say die attitude and also warned his players the Limavady defending in numbers is something they should start to get used too.

“The players by their own admission were not at their best and I think that didn’t help, the nature of the last game (against Limavady) we won 1-0, but it could have been a lot more and I think coming into the game that didn’t do us any favours and it obviously galvanised them, so congratulation to them.

“To be fair Aidy (McLaughlin) he has got them playing with determination and in his defence he wasn’t there at the last league game, so I would say that he has made a bit of difference on Friday night.

“But from our point of view I was very disappointed with the way we applied ourselves for most of the game.

“The first goal was a combination of two or three errors between (Sean) Roddy, (Declan) McKeever and (Graeme) Taylor, then the second goal was a bad goalkeeping error and then we were 2-0 down and chasing the game and their third goal came when we were pushing forward.

“But as I have said we just didn’t do enough offensively and if we do get control of games then that’s what we are going to have to expect this season, sides sitting in against us defending and we have to take our oil.”