We suffered our first home defeat of the season on Friday, going down 2-1 to an added time winner from Sligo Rovers. It was a disappointing result and performance.

“We’re disappointed with the result. We created a number of opportunities but I didn’t think we did enough to win the game. I don’t think we deserved to lose it, but I don’t think we did enough to win it. When you’re off your levels in this league, you can get beaten obviously. We were off our levels on Friday and got beaten.”

We reached the halfway point of the league season with that game and lead the table by two points so is that a satisfactory first half of the campaign?

“We’re disappointed with the last two results. But when you take everything out of it and think we had such a short pre-season, thirteen training days, there was always going to be ups and downs because of that, especially early on. But if you said at the halfway point, we’d be where we are, you would be happy. We know it’s been ok, but we know there’s a lot more to come so I think it’s important we understand that.”

Coming off two successive defeats is a rarity for this group so there’s no bigger game to move on quickly to than Monday’s away Dublin Derby against Bohs.

“It’s a really good week to come into. When you lose games, you just want to go again. We’re coming into two Dublin derbies this week, two really important games. This group as I’ve said before, have tremendous character and have shown that for a number of years. That’s why they are what they are. We will want to go and have a game to put that right. Monday and Friday gives us those opportunities.”

Matt Healy was forced off against Sligo with an injury. Any update on that at this stage and any other new injuries from that game?

“Matt is ok. He hurt his ankle when he went over on it, but he seems ok today. Naj Razi had a knock recently but he’s back. Maleace Asamoah remains out until after the upcoming break. Everyone else is ok.”