Jim Ervin clear 'there's too many people making silly mistakes' after Ballymena United made to pay
Ballymena United manager Jim Ervin labelled his side’s performance during their 2-0 defeat to Dungannon Swifts as “not acceptable” – and feels “there's too many people making silly mistakes” which are costing the Sky Blues dearly.
Ervin’s men fell behind after 28 minutes when Bobby-Jack McAleese fired home his maiden Premiership strike for Dungannon before Kym Nelson’s unfortunate own goal further extended the Swifts’ advantage.
Things almost went from bad to worse for the hosts when Sean O’Neill brought down Adam Glenny with referee Ian McNabb awarding a penalty, but Junior smashed his effort back off the woodwork.
Ballymena ultimately couldn’t find a way back into the contest, and having won each of their opening three fixtures of this season, they’ve now picked up just one victory across the last six.
“Really, really poor,” reflected Ervin. “First half, and probably similar to the Glentoran game, you can't give the opportunities.
"I've said this to the players before, it doesn't matter which team you're playing, if you're going to defend the way we did first half and give the opportunities up that we did, you're going to get punished.
"It doesn't matter what team you're playing in this league because everybody's got their qualities...we've ultimately been punished.
"Listen, I can accept conceding goals, but we're not making it hard for teams to score against us and that's the frustrating thing.
"You look at how we defended the early part of the first three games, how we defended against Linfield. Ultimately, that's what you need, but we need it on a consistent basis...we're not getting it.
"There's too many people making silly mistakes. Ultimately, the goals come down to decision-making.
"We changed the shape at half-time and we tell boys we want to get crosses into their box, which they did, but there were no players there.
"Listen, we all spoke about it at half-time. It's not like we've asked them to do something that they're not used to, it's not that we've asked them to do something that they don't know, they know it.
"We've talked about it after the game there as well. There's no point putting crosses into their box...we gave off to DT (David Toure) in the first half – he had an opportunity to put a ball in the box and he's come back.
"But then when we change the shape in the second half to put balls in the box, we don't have the players...it's frustrating.”