“You can’t give away goals like that” | Tommy Barrett gives honest verdict on UCD defeat

Treaty have outperformed opponents in recent games, in a chance creation sense, but have simply struggled to convert.

Tommy Barrett admitted that his Treaty United side have to do better at the back, as they navigate an ever-growing injury crisis.

Friday night’s 2-0 loss to UCD at the Markets Field marked Treaty’s eighth consecutive game without a win, a torrid period that has seen them slip to seventh in the table.

Talisman Enda Curran is joined by new signings David Tarmey and Yoyo Mahdy as strikers unavailable through injury, but it was a mixup at the back that allowed the college side in for their first goal on Friday.

This was the fifth occasion this season that the Shannonsiders failed to hit the net and, speaking after the game, manager Barrett said that “if you’re down a lot of strikers you have to keep clean sheets.”

“You can’t concede silly goals like that, the two goals were terrible. In fairness to UCD they probably had the first 20 minutes. After that I thought we took over a bit in terms of chances even, we just can’t score. We’re playing some good football, but it’s passive, we’re not penetrating, we don’t have the strikers. Enda probably gets a couple of those when he’s in the box. We don’t have any strikers at the moment and it’s impacting us. At the same time you can’t be feeling sorry for yourself, if you’re down a lot of strikers you have to keep clean sheets, and you can’t concede, certainly can’t concede goals the way we did, they were very poor.”

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Treaty have outperformed opponents in recent games, in a chance creation sense, but have simply struggled to convert.

On the flip side, UCD managed to net two of their three chances at the Markets Field, demonstrating how clinical you have to be if you want points on the board.

Barrett says his side “should’ve scored” on Friday evening.

“We should’ve scored, and we had a couple of other chances to score. You can’t give away goals like that and expect to get anything out of a game. It was just poor, we know we’re down a lot of attacking players. When you find it difficult to score you have to keep it tight, we didn’t do that.”

To make matters worse for the Shannonsiders’ injury stretched squad, they now face into a run of five games in just 14 days.

Back-to-back home ties against Athlone Town and Wexford FC are sandwiched in between trips to Finn Harps and Longford Town. A visit to Cobh Ramblers concludes the hectic spell.

The Treaty boss says that players “have to deal with” the demands of the league, but stressed that there are currently several players under 20 in the current side, who are “behind in terms of physical development.”

“We’re going to have to mix up the squad, we’re going to have to play different lads in those games. It’s not ideal to have those five games, but you have to deal with it. It’s part of being a League of Ireland footballer, you’ve got to be ready for them and you’ve got to be physically ready for them. I think we have 13 or 14 players in the squad there tonight under 20. We’re probably way behind in terms of the physical development of a lot of those lads.”

Treaty United kick off their hectic run of games this Friday, with the long haul trip to Donegal to take on Finn Harps. Kick-off in Finn Park has been confirmed for 7:45pm.

The two sides met in the Markets Field earlier in the season, when late Tony McNamee strike saw Harps come away with all three points.