Ferguson wants United to bounce back from ‘humiliation’

The Ballymena United boss believes his team must re-focus quickly as they prepare to face Linfield at the Showgrounds this Saturday (3pm).

The start of December heralds a daunting looking fixture list for the Sky Blues, with back-to-back home games against title-chasing Linfield and Crusaders, as well the League Cup semi-final against Ballinamallard United and the Boxing Day ‘derby’ game with Coleraine.

“I need to apologise to the fans who sat through another 7-0 humiliation - I thought those days were behind us,” Ferguson told Times Sport.

“I will take responsibility for the result but some of the responsibility has to lie at the feet of the referee for his decisions.

“We have had a couple of good wins in recent weeks but we knew that a sequence of Cliftonville, Linfield, Crusaders was going to be tough with the squad of players available to us.

“We still have a lot of injuries to key personnel but the players who are coming in are being given their chance and it’s up to them whether they take it or not.

“We need to get a squad of 16 and 11 players on the pitch who are willing to do a job for us.

“Davy Munster will be suspended after his red card at the weekend which will be costly for us as well but it’s one of those things.

“We just have to take what happened on the chin and get on with it.

“It goes without saying that we need to be better defensively against Linfield. But we also need to be more clinical in front of goal because, despite Saturday’s scoreline, we had plenty of chances of our own,” added Ferguson.