STEPHEN BRADLEY knows the scores but believes Shamrock Rovers’ numbers are a reason to be upbeat.
The Hoops face St Pat’s in Tallaght tonight in front of the Virgin Media cameras in an unfamiliar position at the bottom of the table.
They have one point from their opening three games, which continues their recent record of slow starts having failed to win until their fifth fixture last year, and seventh in 2023.
That they won the title in 2023, and were five minutes away from doing so last year, means there is no panic among supporters.
And Bradley said the feeling is the same at the Hoops’ Roadstone training ground, unlike last season.
He said: “If you compare the start of this season to last, I think it’s night and day to be honest.
“At the start of last season, we didn’t look like ourselves at all.
“I couldn’t come away from games and say after a period that what we were doing was really good.
“Whereas, this time, you take out the 25 minutes against Bohs which is understandable after the night, I think take out that, a lot of what we’ve done has been really good.”
That ‘night’ was the Hoops’ 1-0 Conference League last-16 play-off victory away to Molde.
But their European adventure came to an end with an agonising shootout defeat to the Norwegians the following week.
Between those results came the opening-weekend 1-0 defeat to Bohemians in front of a record league crowd at the Aviva Stadium.
And those games have been followed by a 1-1 draw with champions Shelbourne and a 2-1 defeat to Sligo Rovers last Monday, with all three of the goals conceded coming from set-pieces.
Bradley added: “I like where the group is, but I don’t like conceding the goals we conceded on Monday night.
“You shouldn’t lose a game where you have no shots on target against, that’s pretty clear.
“But if you don’t defend set-plays, you don’t win games. That cost us on Monday night which is really, really poor.
“The feeling of the group, of where we are, large aspects of what we’re doing is right, tidy up them bits, if we don’t, we’ll lose games, if we do, we’ll be fine.”
WATTS OF IT?
Midfielder Dylan Watts also insisted there are no worries about the Hoops’ start to the season and dismissed the idea there is a hangover from the European loss.
He said: “We were all gutted after the game and to lose on penalties is the hardest way to lose a match.
“We were riding such a high for a long time with the European stuff and the performances were obviously stepping up a notch because of the levels of the opposition.
“If you told us we’d have one point after three games we’d obviously be disappointed.
“But we have another massive game and hopefully we’ll put it right and put three points on the board.
“It’s not ideal to be honest that we’ve done it the last few years but we know we need to do better and start seasons better.”
