Slow starts and early changes proving a source of frustration

In fact, you have to go back to March of this year to find the last time the Sky Blues drew a Danske Bank Premiership game, leaving no middle ground between the highs of a win and the lows of a defeat.

There’s another statistic about the opening few weeks of the season which I find fairly staggering, and certainly something I never recall happening previously.

In six out of eight competitive fixtures this season, manager Glenn Ferguson has made at least one substitution either in the first half or else at the half-time interval.

The only one of those which leaps to mind as being for an injury was David Cushley at Seaview, so on five other occasions, players have been ‘hooked’ before the break for tactical reasons.

It points to a situation where individual players are not performing the roles assigned to them from the start of the game, which must be hugely frustrating to the management team. In virtually every game this season, Ballymena have been carrying ‘passengers’ in the first half - a complete no-no in the ultra-competitive Premiership.

Ask any manager and they will doubtless tell you that they don’t set out with the intention of using one of their allocated changes before a ball has even been kicked in the second period.

Gavin Taggart was the latest to suffer the early walk to the bench on Saturday past - if truth be told, he was fortunate not to be making the journey straight down the Windsor Park tunnel after committing a clumsy foul while already on a yellow card and Ferguson acted swiftly to prevent his side going down to 10 men...temporarily, as it turned out.

Allan Jenkins, of course, was not so fortunate.

With Ballymena’s attempts at a comeback having been thwarted by Linfield’s third goal from the penalty spot, the skipper’s verbal broadside at referee Hugh Carvill was not so much the equivalent of pulling one card from a house of cards as taking a hammer to it.

It seems that the use of the ‘c’ word - ‘cheat’ - may have been the cause for the dismissal, which, even given Jenkins’ obvious frustration, was only ever going to have one outcome. I remember a few years ago, asking a referee in general conversation what the parameters were in terms of what a player could say to an official.

I remember being surprised at how much a ref will turn a deaf ear to what might be termed ‘industrial language’ but the very clear message I picked up from that chat was that referees will not accept having their integrity questioned.

Strange as it sounds given the scoreline, I’ve seen worse Ballymena performances at Windsor Park but handing the Blues a 2-0 lead inside 20 minutes makes an already uphill task the equivalent of trying to climb Everest in a pair of slip-on shoes.

* Follow Ballymena United Sports Editor Stephen Alexander on Twitter (@Stephen_Bmena)