Institute: Deery hopes new boy Harkin can kick start new season

The Drumahoe men, who still haven’t secured a point or even scored in the league, currently sit at the top of the table, but they know a win could kick start their season.

As for Larne, they suffered two league defeats in their opening few games but bounced back superbly in their last outing last month.

After securing a 3-1 League Cup win over Loughgall, they then hammered Lisburn Distillery 7-0 a few days later on Saturday, August 22, while last weekend they had a comfortable 3-0 win at Chimney Corner in the Steels & Sons Cup

They did suffer a blow when in-form striker Ciaran Murray, who has bagged six from five starts this season, joined Premiership side Cliftonville before yesterday’s transfer deadline.

Regardless what’s happening with the Inver Park men, Deery is only concerned about his side.

Although Ards, Harland & Wolff Welders and Knockbreda have started the season well, title favourites Bangor haven’t had the best of starts and Deery is hoping his side can start moving up the table.

“Larne will be coming to us full of confidence, they are playing well and scoring goals,” he stated.

“Our performances haven’t been that bad, I’m just disappointed that we haven’t taken our chances in those games.

“My mentality and what I’ll be telling the players is that I feel Larne will be one of the sides up there challenging for the title, so I’ll be asking the players can they mix it with a side who I feel could be potential champions.

“I will be telling the players that this is where we have to get too and this is the type of sides who we have to be competing with

“Yes we need to get our first league win and then I’ll be looking to see if we can go on a run.”

Deery also concedes that his young squad need to start figuring out how to win games at a senior level and he’s excited about recent signing Ciaron Harkin, who’s expected to be involved this weekend.

“As everyone knows you can’t buy experience and also as everyone knows the club isn’t going to be paying big wages to players who have experience, so it’s a catch 22 situation.

“But I’m hoping when young Ciaron comes into the team he’ll give us a wee lift.

“I know stature wise he doesn’t look the biggest, but he’s very imposing, he gets around the pitch very well and to fair to him he isn’t afraid to make a tackle.”

Deery was understandably upset after last Friday’s defeat to neighbours Limavady United.

“We lost the game, we lost the game well and of course from my point of view that’s disappointing,” he said.

“We gave a few players their opportunity in the game but they clearly weren’t up to the challenge.

“For me that leaves me guessing a little bit because we should have performed better than we did.

“I’m a competitor, anyone who knows me, know that so I want to win every game that we play.

“Performances like that from my team are just not in my make up and I as I said I wasn’t happy with the way it went.”

After having kept the players in the dressing room long after the game had finished the Derry man said there was no shouting involved.

“There was no shouting and roaring from my side, we were just trying to be brutally honest with the players.

“We simply had to make the players understand that the performance was far from acceptable.

“We had to let people know what we thought after this game because we had been performing okay in the previous games.

“In terms of points we should already be on the board but again that’s something that we’ll look at again.”