Deery urges Institute to build on performance ahead of Newry visit

Institute manager Kevin Deery wants his players to build on Tuesday night’s draw with promotion-hunting H&W Welders when they face lowly Newry City, at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, on Saturday.

The Drumahoe club produced a super performance against Paul Kee’s title challengers and in truth should have won the contest, but Deery wants his squad to take the positive from the encounter.

“Out of the next seven games we’ve five at home so we want to capitalise on that,” he insisted.

“Our achilles heel this year has been the goals, but coming from behind against the Welders things might turn for us now, yes, we should have been five or six up, but we should good character not to lose the game and we need to show that character and belief going into the Newry game on Saturday.

“Look we should have maximised far more points this season but we just have to keep driving those standards and keep those performances in our next few games, starting with Newry.

“As I said we have to capitalise on our home games no matter who we’re playing. We should against Welders and Limavady, both who are challenging for the league, that we aren’t afraid of no team in the division.

“We just need to take our chances and stop leaking the wee moments at the other end, but as I said we just need to move onto the next game and capitalise on being at home and putting in another good performance.”

Striker Mikhail Kennedy and Cormac Burke look set to miss this weekend’s game, with the latter expected to be out for a number of months, after injuring his quad.

“Mikhail, was finding it difficult to breathe and looks like he has a wee fracture in the nose, so that hopefully will be reset and then seeing where he’s at, but Burkie is a real problem,” explained Deery.

Institute players huddle before the game against HW Welders.

“I’m disappointed for Cormac because he’s had a difficult year and a half. He played a good part last season whenever we were successful, but this year he stepped up really well when we needed him.

“He’s had one or two wee niggling injuries, but this one is a disappointing injury for him, I told him to wait and see what the scan says but no matter what happens I told him to be an animal in the gym and work hard, so he’s ready to make an impact whenever he does come-back.”

The Stute boss was frustrated that his side didn’t easily see off Paul Kee’s men on Tuesday night, but he was pleased that his squad showed good character to battle back and earn a point.

“We didn’t lose the game, which was very important,” he added. “To be honest we should have been leading a minimum 4-0 at half-time.

READ NEXT: Institute fail to punish title chasing H&W Welders

“We were in total control and missed chance after chance, a couple of really good chances, a few one-on-one’s and Mikhail (Kennedy) should have scored.

“But listen, in our last three performances we blitzed Dundela, we scored three but didn’t manage the game and couldn’t hold onto it up there.

“We were miles the better team than Limavady and gave up two soft goals and tonight (Tuesday), we should’ve been out of sight in both halves to be honest.

“Their defending to be honest was a bit erratic and we should have scored far more goals than what we did, but we have to go into the Newry game and aim to start pulling away from the bottom half of the table and start winning games.”