Ferguson rues missed chances after defeat

The Sky Blues missed a chance to go 2-1 ahead when David Cushley’s penalty was saved by Glenavon keeper Jonny Tuffey and Ballymena went on to concede two goals in the final 10 minutes.

“We didn’t score goals and we missed too many opportunities,” said Ferguson.

“We talked and worked desperately hard about how dangerous Glenavon are at set pieces, especially corners, and tried to restrict them as minimal as possible.

“They didn’t have one corner in the first half and then the first corner they got in the second half they scored from.

“Before that I’m sure our chances must have been in double figures.

“It was a good performance from us but our finishing wasn’t great.

“He has played full-time football, he’s an international goalkeeper and that’s why clubs pay the big money to get the big keepers.

“He has done a great job but on another day the likes of Matthew Tipton and David Cushley are more clinical while Allan Jenkins was in the right place at the right time in the first half but unfortunately so was Tuffey.

“We can’t dwell on that - the bottom line is that we dominated the game for large parts but couldn’t score goals.

“I wouldn’t put Cush’s effort down as a penalty miss as such - it was a great save from the goalkeeper.

“It’s a results business and the difference in the performance is Crusaders are clinical, ruthless, as well as we played against Portadown, they were ruthless and today if we had been ruthless, we would easily have won that game.

“The players were frustrated and critical but I stopped them and told them the performance was good - it was the finishing that let us down.

“We played as well as we have done for a long time but you have to finish well to kill games off and we didn’t do that,” added Ferguson.