Frustration for boss as toothless United crash against Ports

GLENN Ferguson endured a footballing groundhog day as Ballymena United’s Achilles heel of not finishing chances returned to haunt them in Saturday’s 2-1 league defeat by Portadown.

“It was frustrating and disappointing because I think it was a match we definitely deserved to get something out of,” said Ferguson

“We maybe didn’t do enough to win it but I think a draw would have been a fair result and with a bit of luck we could have won it – we had plenty of pressure in the second half and a couple of half-chances but we just didn’t have that killer instinct.

“We brought Chris Rodgers in to do a man-to-man job on Kevin Braniff and stop Braniff from scoring. By half-time the roles were reversed and it turned out Chris had scored, which wasn’t in the plan but we were delighted for him.

“We looked in control at half-time and hadn’t been under that much pressure but we knew they would come out and up the ante in the second half and Braniff, being the quality player that he is, got away a couple of times and punished us.

“We had a lot of balls dropping in the box in the second half and if we had someone with a killer instinct to be more clinical and put their head on the line, we could have created something else.

“We are depleted with injuries to key players but the guys who came in did quite well,” added Ferguson.