FINN HARPS WERE heavily beaten 5-0 by derby foes Derry City at Finn Park on Friday night.
It was Derry’s first win over Harps this season. Aaron McEneff, with two penalties, had City 2-0 ahead by the break. Former Harps striker Nathan Boyle added a third before Lukas Schubert and Keith Ward scored late goals.
Picture caption: Tony McNamee in action against Derry City’s Ryan McBride. Picture by Gary Foy, newsandsportfiles
- A derby ordeal of the darkest kind
FINN Harps have, bluntly, a pitiful record in the north-west derby having won only seven times in 62 meetings (only twice in League football).,
But Friday night’s was one of the most painful of all for Harps supporters.
To be beat by Derry is one thing, but to be humiliated on home soil by the Candystripes is an entirely different matter altogether.
Aaron McEneff’s two penalties put City in command, although replays later showed that the award of the first was a huge error on the part of linesman Darren Corcoran.
Nathan Boyle, Lukas Schubert and Keith Ward added goals in the second half as Derry swatted Harps aside.
Ollie Horgan, the Harps manager, described, as ‘a shambles’, his team’s second-half display.
It was the heaviest derby defeat since a 7-0 League Cup loss in 1989 and the biggest in League football since their first competitive meeting, a 7-2 win for Derry that ended the tenure of Bobby Toland as Harps manager.
Horgan said: “They could have scored seven or eight and the performance in the last 20 minutes certainly isn’t good enough for this Division.”
[adrotate group=”50″]- Change of shape hurting Harps
BARRY Molloy noted on this website on Friday morning how Harps had to ‘go back to what we were good at early in the season – being hard to beat’.
Molloy noted how Harps’ set up in the early moments of the campaign meant that teams struggled to find a way through and it had the desired effect where points were concerned.
Harps, at times, flitted between playing a 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2, but of late have gone to playing a three-man defence.
It hasn’t just been a change of the actual shape but, for instance, Dave Scully, so effective at times earlier in the year, has fallen out of favour of late.
Molloy was right, though: Harps must get back to what they were good at. The consequences of not doing so are unthinkable.
[adrotate group=”38″]- Harps now in the relegation battle
WITH Wexford Youths defeating Longford Town on Friday, the margins are ever-narrowing at the basement and Ollie Horgan’s words are beginning to look prophetic.
Horgan has long been trumpeting the fact that his team will be in a battle with Wexford and Longford in a ‘mini League’ at the basement of the standings.
Harps haven’t won in four games and have a tough run of games coming up, after a week out of action this weekend.
Wexford are now just five points beneath them. While Longford – who parted company with manager Tony Cousins on Saturday – look to be too far gone to get a kick for survival, Wexford’s tails will be up now.
They have to play Harps at Ferrycarrig Park and Shane Keegan’s team are starting to breathe down Harps’ necks.
It could be a bumpy and uncomfortable ride, yet.
[adrotate group=”37″]- Harps have gone goal shy
SINCE Sean Houston netted the winner against Galway United in Ballybofey on July 8, Harps have gone four games without scoring.
Harps haven’t hit the target now in over 380 minutes of football and it is the lack of clear-cut chances in that period that is perhaps more worrying than the blanks being fired.
Despite the return of Ruairi Keating – who, granted, was suspended on Friday night and didn’t play – Harps have gone goal shy.
Against Derry, they had little joy in createing chances and were restricted largely to half-chances in a game that ran away from them before becoming an ordeal.
Harps have two weeks before they next play, against Shamrock Rovers. Finding the scoring touch will be top the agenda in the next fortnight.
[adrotate group=”70″]- Shiels might be mocked, but he’s transformed Derry again
KENNY Shiels doesn’t exactly endear himself to opponents but, then again, that’s hardly the perogative of the Derry City manager.
On the opening night of the season, after a 2-1 loss to Harps, Shiels criticised the Finn Park pitch and hit out at the placement of the away dugout in Ballybofey.
In the run-up to Friday’s game, Shiels indicated to the Derry Journal that he had approached the FAI and attempted to get the fixture called off – as he had an injury ‘crisis’.
Shiels admitted that he had put a call through to Abbotstown, but ‘only got through to an answerphone’. Yet when his team lined out at Ballybofey, Niclas Vemmelund, Ryan McBride, Conor McDermott and Dean Jarvis all played having been classed as doubts by Shiels.
The Derry boss has guided his team up to second ahead of this evening’s meeting with Cork City and, over the weekend, added Cristian Castells, a Spanish defender, to his squad.
Derry are well in contention for a European place now, a measure of their rise once more under Shiels, even if he’s a figure of fun everywhere outside of Brandywell.
