'Stute players fail to put in a shift

The Coleraine man was dejected following the 3-0 drubbing, which also saw Kevin Ramsey leave the ground in an ambulance with badly damaged ankle ligaments.

"I don't think apart from Friday night's game and the Cliftonville match away from home, where the players haven't put in a shift for me," he admitted.

"I think it would be very unfair of me to just look at the players, I always felt whenever I was a player that I looked at myself first and concentrated on what I could do better.

"I think there were players who played against Linfield and they didn't look themselves but I think the best thing in football is how you respond to a defeat.

"But I told the players after the Linfield game the easy thing you can do is drop your heads and blame other people or blame this or that, I said to them the best thing we can do is how we respond and I'm certainly looking for a response."

Gregg also felt his players were a little leg weary and the Linfield match was just one game too much for them in such a short space of time.

"I told the players that I could take a lot of positives from the Portadown game, but I thought we were tired looking and lethargic and the three games in the space of six days caught up with us, we didn't get any sort of pattern to our play and we were making simple mistakes.

"Again it was too easy to give a goal away; we didn't pick up in our box, Winkie Murphy had a free-header at the back stick and I think before that it was too easy to put a cross into our box, there were two or three which were crossed in too easy.

"I told the players before the game if they kept the game simple and do the basics, which is defend and the idea was to keep them as tight as possible, because you know what it's like against Linfield, they get frustrated if it's still score-less after 50 or 60 minutes, so to go behind after just 15 minutes was very frustrating."

The 'Stute gaffer believes his side now know they have five games remaining to ensure Carling Premiership football remains at the Riverside Stadium.

"We are now in a league of our own and this is what it's about now for us," explained Gregg.

"It's a six team league there are points to be played for and it's a massive game against Distillery next Saturday and we are in Tuesday and Thursday and we'll have a very tough week ahead for us in preparation for the Distillery game," concluded Gregg.