Scully looks for Limerick FC improvement

Limerick FC will hope to bounce back from last week’s defeat against Waterford United when they take on Mervue United at Jackman Park this Friday.

An underwhelming display from Pat Scully’s team saw them lose to an 88th-minute David Breen goal, but they have the opportunity to further strengthen their position at the top of Airtricity League Division One in front of their own fans this weekend.

Manager Scully hopes that his team will produce a strong reaction to last week’s disappointment and deliver a performance to match their high standards.

“We want to react in a proper way after last week. We’ve had a couple of setbacks recently and we’ve dropped five points in our last two games.

“We need to get back on track and we can’t afford any more slip-ups for the rest of the season. If we perform well and play to our standards we’ve a very good chance of winning, but as last week showed when you drop your standards you can be beaten.”

Despite the poor result against Waterford, Limerick are still three points clear at the top of the table with five games left to play, three of them at Jackman Park.

Scully and his players are fully focused on the points that can still be won rather than the points that have been lost and the manager is keeping a cool head as the climax draws ever closer.

“We trained on Monday night and we had an excellent session. We had a chat before training and we all know we didn’t do enough last week.

“I’m not going to panic. There’s no point in losing the head at this stage over one bad result. We just need to be nice, calm and confident going forward.

“Mervue might be near the bottom but we know it’ll be a tough game. They all are at this point in the season. It’s a game we have to win and we have to accept the situation we’re in.”

Limerick were booed off the pitch by a section of the home support at the final whistle last Friday and Scully knows that they didn’t perform anywhere near their best.

He let his players know as such in the dressing room after the game and he believes that the team can quickly put the Waterford game behind them.

“We could have no complaints with the result. We switched off at the end and didn’t play well. Waterford deserved to win.

“I can accept the criticism from the fans. We dropped our standards and we had a frank discussion after the game.

“Now we want to improve our standards again and go out and perform on Friday night. We’re not going to look too deeply at the negatives at this stage.”

Jeffrey Judge is suspended for the visit of Mervue after being sent off last week, while Dave Ryan, Stephen McGann and Stephen Bradley will all miss the game through injury. Scully also rated striker Denis Behan as doubtful for Friday but he hopes to have Dave O’Leary back in the squad.