‘We were below par’ - insists Carlyle

The Waterside out-fit played the majority of the game against the nine men and despite having a stoppage time goal disallowed they never really got going.

“It’s definitely two points lost and we were well below par, we didn’t create enough and the chances we had we should have taken them,” conceded Carlyle.

“Yes you can look at the referee for disallowing a good legitamet goal in the 90th minute, but you should be killing teams off who have nine men and we are much better than that.

“We told the players after the game that sometimes they have to solve the problems, we can’t solve it for them and there was too many against Dergview who were below par.”

Carlyle also warned the players that the management team will make changes if they don’t raise their game.

“We will make changes to the side if we don’t change things around,” he added.

“For two games in a row we haven’t turned up in the first half and it’s not good enough, we had too many people playing on their own terms, it was too slow, we had no energy and when we don’t have the ball we don’t work hard enough to get it back.

“It’s not as though we haven’t worked on it and it’s not as if they don’t know but for some reason or another the last two games that has been the way it is. But to be fair we couldn’t fault the players efforts in the second half, but at the end of the day if you are going to be going for promotion, then you have to have that cutting edge and that nastiness to run over the top of teams.

“Once they cross that white line they need to have that drive in their belly and work ethic before they look to play this expansive football.

Carlyle did however praise young striker Michael Coyle who was given his first start for the club.

“I think to be fair to young Coyle he was on his own in the first half and the players weren’t supporting him, to be honest Michael probably came out with one of the better ones in the first half, but the second half maybe he tired a bit, but overall I felt he did OK.

“Look we had three, four, five good chances and they were poor strikes on target and then in the second half we have to learn how to break teams down, you have to have better movement and we just didn’t have it.

“Unfortunately in the second half we just didn’t have that cutting edge and we should have killed them off but we just didn’t do it.”