McAree: ‘It was more a complete performance’

COLERAINE manager Rodney McAree was full of praise for his side’s exploits as they ran out worthy winners at Windsor Park…

The Bannsiders led at the interval via Matthew Clarke’s own goal and doubled their advantage on 65 minutes as Kirk Millar also found the back of his own net. The Blues reduced their arrears with three minutes to go as Kirk Millar’s corner-kick managed to find the net via a deflection, but the Stripes held on to register a deserved three points.

Speaking after the game, boss McAree revealed he has seen improvements in Coleraine’s recent performances and was glad to register back-to-back wins.

“I’ve been seeing improvements over the last few weeks,” McAree said.

“We played well against Crusaders, we played well in the first half against Cliftonville, we played well against Glentoran but we conceded poor goals.

“It was a bit of a pattern that when we scored a goal we conceded almost straight away, so we tried to address that at Institute last week.

“We managed the game after we took the lead last week.

“It wasn’t a great performance footballing wise last week, but the conditions dictated a lot of that.

“It was a professional performance last week, but I thought today was more of a complete performance.

“I am disappointed we didn’t get a clean sheet, I thought Chris deserved one.

“Our ball retention was very good, but it was retention with a view of doing something, it wasn’t just a case of keeping the ball for the sake of it, it was trying to break lines and going forward, and I thought we did that very well.

“A couple of times our final ball was maybe a little bit rash, but I’ll not dwell too much on that.”

McAree hopes the success against Linfield will give his players a lift as he aims to implement his own philosophy on things at The Showgrounds.

“It was a good result for me because hopefully it will it will give the changing room another lift and give them the belief in what I’m trying to do,” he added.

“We haven’t got massive amount of numbers, but we have quality players.

“It’s about trying to get the most and the best out of them as we possibly can.

“On Tuesday night we only has 12 outfield players on the training pitch.

“On Thursday night we had planned to work on shape, but because of niggles and one thing and another none of our back four were able to train.

“That has been testing, but training has been good doing our keep ball drills and everything else.

“When I first came in I didn’t want to dabble or change things too much because the boys were on a fantastic unbeaten run.

“But I was going home at times feeling a little frustrated in terms of how I was doing things because I was maybe trying to be someone else.

“I was trying to make decisions based on what had been done before.

“I thought it was a good time for me to change the formation and shape and put a little bit of my own identity on it.”

The manager admits it was an ‘enormous three points’ banked by his players but they will simply take each game as it comes.

“Today was an enormous three points and we spoke about that with the players before the game,” he concluded.

“If we had come here and got beat people would have come away from the game feeling down when they look at the table. If we had drawn the game then people maybe would have been frustrated that we missed a good opportunity.

“But we challenged everybody to come here and win, not to be coming here and being content with a point.

“It was all about getting the win and trying to get ourselves closer to the top of the table.

“But it’s about taking one game at a time.”