Manager John Caulfield hopes to make a couple of signings in the July transfer window to boost Galway United’s SSE Airtricity League first division promotion push.
Last Friday evening United suffered a harrowing 4-0 defeat at Tolka Park against a well organised Shelbourne outfit, who continue to set the standard at this level.
United return to competitive action on June 11 when hosting Athlone Town at Eamonn Deacy Park with Caulfield planning and plotting ahead of that fixture.
“I think that is the responsibility,” Caulfield says. “Everyone comes in with the best of intentions. When you put a new squad together with new players bringing them all from different environments, you are bringing them all to the city.
“All of the team live in Galway and I can't speak highly enough of the training and their efforts. Adapting to full time training is difficult.
“At the same time there have been disappointments. Certain players, and they will admit it themselves, haven't got to the standard we expected. That is not from the want of trying, sometimes that can happen.”
Caulfield expects to make some additions to the squad during the coming weeks. “It is my job to get the best out of the players,” Caulfield adds. “You are always looking at tweaking the team, how to improve it, and certainly after the first third of the season our results have indicated that in the first 10 games we haven't been good enough.
“We have had four draws, three losses, and three wins. We need to turn that around for the rest of the season and certainly we are looking at options of trying to tweak it by maybe changing around one or two personnel.”
The Tolka Park loss hurt United deeply with some defensive lapses ruthlessly punished. “Shelbourne are the top team in the league at the moment and we all know they have invested heavily to get promotion straight away,” Caulfield says.
“They have made it clear that they expect to win the first division. At the same time we have brought a new team in, we have built, we are training hard, but when you go to play a team like Shelbourne you have to be at the best of your game.
“In the first 20 or 25 minutes it was a tight game, you could say we weathered the storm early in the first 10 or 15 minutes. Then we came into the match ourselves, I felt we were playing well. We had a free kick in our own half and inexplicably passed it to their centre forward, he takes a shot, it takes a wicked deflection and you are one down.
“We get back into the match, we had one fantastic opportunity to score, had another chance, a header just wide. We had a period of 10 minutes where we were on top. We had opportunities, but we didn't score to get back to one all.
“Five minutes before half-time they have a very strong counter attack, the ball goes across the box and to the edge of the area, O'Connor takes another shot, it takes a wicked deflection. You are two down with two deflections going in at half-time.”
Caulfield is eager for United to summon a response when Athlone visit the west. “It was a very disappointing night because we felt beforehand that we could cause them problems,” Caulfield says about the Shels encounter.
“The difficulty probably for ourselves is that in the first third of the season we have given away too many soft goals.
“That is very disappointing, also we have been creating a lot of chances in matches and we just haven't taken the chances we thought we would. So we have a lot of work to do over the break to get things right for Athlone when we play them on Friday week.”
