‘The players all have to look at themselves’ - Carlyle

Carlyle, who felt the game was pretty tight up until Darren Nixon’s opening goal.

“The first half was even enough. They had a goalmouth scramble where Corey Wilson made two or three good saves but we had a few chances ourselves where Dean (Jarvis) should maybe have hit the target and their keeper made a good save but it was evenly contested.

“In the second half we gave a silly, needless free-kick away and they put it across the front post and the guy heads it in.

“And for their second goal, our defender tries to step up and play offside and gets caught out which was just laziness really and that’s 2-0.

“We began to throw caution to the wind and we hit the crossbar, their keeper made another good save. But there’s no team better than us in the league. However, that’s three games with no goals. We can blame the strikers for not scoring but they have to get the proper service as well, everybody’s in it collectively.

“We have been creating chances but just haven’t been having the luck. The players all have to look at themselves and ask if they’re doing enough so hopefully we get a response on Saturday.”

The Maiden City Academy coach remains up beat and certainly isn’t about to push any panic button, despite dropping ten points behind leaders Ballinamallard United.

“It’s not a major worry at the minute, as we’ve said all along, we’ll assess the situation after Christmas, the first week in January and see where we are.

“If we’re within touching distance of the leaders at that point, then there’s still half a season left to play, so we’ll be very much still in the race.”

Carlyle also knows that in the next few weeks the Waterside men come up against the bottom two sides in the Belfast Telegraph Championship, Glebe Rangers and Banbridge Town and maximum points from those games could turn their season around.

“We’ve got games against Glebe and Banbridge coming up now and we should be looking for six points, so it’s all to play for and we’ll get it right.

“Every team’s taking points off each other. Dergview drew with Ballinamallard, Newry still have to play Ballinamallard so everyone’s going to drop points at some stage.

“But we can’t keep losing matches cheaply. There’s no team that has out-played us or played through us and 90 per cent of goals conceded are our own fault. We keep giving teams a head-start and then it’s a battle as they keep getting players behind the ball.

“So I wouldn’t rule us out of the promotion race at this stage, definitely not but yes, we should be defeating teams like Ards.

“When you look at the start we had to the season, we should’ve won the opening three games. We dropped points against Welders which we dominated for 90 per cent of the game. And in the Ballinamallard game we should have got something and in the Tobermore game. We have to take responsibility for when the team lose.”