Ballinamallard manager Tommy Canning admits the end of the season has come at the right time for the club after they ended their campaign with a second successive heavy home defeat.
The Mallards followed up their 5-0 thrashing by Ards with a 4-0 loss to Ballyclare on Friday evening, with Canning admitting performances have not been good enough.
“The only saving grace is that the season is over because the run of form we are in at the minute is relegation material,” he acknowledged.
“It was really, really disappointing. We wanted a response to last Saturday, and whilst maybe initially it wasn’t as bad as Saturday, I think when you look at it in the round it is really poor. It's not good at all. It’s a recipe for disaster when you can’t score goals and you are leaking goals the way we are.”
Canning was appointed manager in November and under his stewardship, the team have picked up 40 points, but he admits that recent results have fallen far below what is expected at Ballinamallard.
“The trajectory this club is on is not good,” he conceded. “If you go back to the 2020 season Ballinamallard were pushing for promotion, and here we find ourselves on the back of a 5-0 defeat and a 4-0 defeat from two games at home against teams in the bottom half of the division.
"That is really worrying and really unacceptable. We feel like, as a staff team, we have prepared well last week and this week.
"Whatever thoughts there were last week about having our eye off the ball, that certainly wasn’t the case this week because of what happened on Saturday, but we still get that outcome. It's worrying.”
The Mallards have finished the season with huge question marks hanging over the team at both ends of the pitch.
The defensive solidity that was the cornerstone of their successes has disappeared in recent games, and their inability to convert chances has remained an issue throughout the season.
“We have looked so fragile for some reason over the last four or five games,” said the manager.
“I don’t know why that is. It feels like there is a complete lack of motivation. I don’t know if we have thrown the towel in on the season.
"From a group that was conceding very few goals and were very solid out of possession, with the second least amount of goals conceded prior to the split, we have only kept one clean sheet against Dergview since and conceded 12 goals, nine in the last two games.
"We still carry that inability to score goals as well. On Friday in the first half, we have four or five really good chances that we don’t score from.”
Canning is adamant that the team cannot go into next season without addressing their problem areas, and he knows there will have to be changes if they are to improve.
“It has left huge question marks over people going forward,” he admitted.
“This football club already lost a manager this year, and had this season ran on for much longer then I know there would be huge questions asked. There is a huge amount of work to be done.
"We said to the players after the match that they need to turn this around or we need to bring people in that will turn it around. They are the only two things that can happen.
"Something has to change, whether it’s the manager or the playing staff. We are coming into the season of recruitment, and we need to bring people to this football club that are going to change the trajectory. Work has already been done around that.”
Despite the deflating end to the campaign, the Mallards have shown that at the peak of their form and with a full squad they are in a position to challenge and beat the best teams in the Championship.
“It hasn’t been all doom and gloom,” said Canning. “This group has been capable of pulling off big results. You have to factor in that recently we have lost Peter Maguire and Richie Johnston who are big players defensively. We lost Jamie Dunne in January, we lost Callum Moorehead more recently, and we lost Simon Warrington, three players at the top end of the pitch. There is some context to it, but even with that, we have ended the season on a really sour note. Looking forward, we need to start building and recruiting for next year.”
The Mallards know they will go into next season without John Edgar, and Ben McCann is moving to Liverpool and will also be unavailable for the new campaign, but Canning believes the rest of the squad are keen to return.
“We have spoken to the majority of the other players, and they want to be here and there is no sign of anybody else moving on at this point, but on the back of those two results that might change from a recruitment perspective,” he said.
“We will see over the next few weeks, but players want to be here. Why would you not want to be at Ballinamallard when you look at what is on offer? But whether or not what we have here is enough to take us in the direction we want to go remains to be seen over the next few weeks.”
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