United suffer more Windsor hassle

On three occasions in almost two season in charge, Walker has taken the Sky Blues to the national stadium only to return with a 1-0 defeat – all three of them in virtually identical circumstances.

Once again on Saturday, Ballymena comfortably reached half-time scoreless, then conceded a goal during a spell of Blues pressure in the second half, then could not force an equaliser despite a late flurry – those three games have been virtual carbon copies of each other.

"I said to the boys in the dressing room we need to have more belief coming to these places," said Walker afterwards.

"There's really not a lot to fear any more in the Irish League if you have a faith in your own play that you can get something out of the game.

"I didn't thin that over the whole game, we were assertive enough and believed enough that we could come and take the fight to Linfield and hurt them in the right areas.

"We matched Linfield in certain areas and hurt them in others but I needed everyone to come to the party and I felt we had one or two indifferent performances from people that we would maybe have expected a little more from and one or two who played really well.

"The 1-0 result was probably fair enough. We had a wee flurry near the end where Alan Blayney made a couple of saves but we didn't really do enough for me and we didn't keep the ball well enough in the top third of the pitch.

"We should have scored in the first half with a Gary Haveron header from a corner – Gary's a big man and he's got to do better than that but I can't be too critical.

"Generally it was fairly even in most areas of the pitch. Probably defences were better than forwards on both sides and the keepers were relatively untroubled throughout the game.

"We just lacked a wee bit in certain areas and they are things we have to address," added Roy.

The decisive goal came on 50 minutes when Philip Lowry exchanged passes with William Murphy and fired a shot through the legs of defender Chris Ramsey into the side of the net.

Ballymena made former keeper Alan Blayney work a couple of times late on through Darren Lockhart and Andy Smith but like last week's loss to Portadown, it was a performance which makes it difficult to escape the opinion that these league games are merely an unwanted sideshow ahead of the Irish Cup semi-final on April 10.

Linfield: Blayney, BJ Burns, Murphy, Casement, Curran, Mulgrew, Lowry, Garrett, Tomelty (sub A Burns 46), Allen, McAllister (sub Munster 68). Subs (not used): Douglas, Gault, Addis.

Ballymena United: Nelson, M Smith, Stewart (sub Cushley 68), Haveron, Watson, Ramsey, Muir (sub Surgenor 63), Taggart (sub Lockhart 76), A Smith, Kelbie, Colligan. Subs (not used): McVeigh, O'Neill.

Referee: Trevor Moutray (Dundonald).