United boss set to cull squad in response to team’s ongoing struggles

GALWAY United manager John Caulfield says he has two weeks to try to salvage something from the season – and that could start with a cull of a squad that has won just two games on the pitch in 2021.

The League of Ireland season has reached the mid-season break, and United headed into that interruption on the back of a 4-0 duffing at the hands of Shelbourne in a display which Caufield described as “unacceptable”.

“That performance wasn’t good enough, too many players were below par,” he told Tribune Sport.

“You have to take responsibility – you can’t train during the week, work on a game plan, and have fellas not take responsibility, to get on the ball, play it, move, take people on one-on-one.

“The movement was not good enough – you can do it [movement] in training but when you cross the white line, if you haven’t got the composure, the balls, the spirit, the determination to go on the pitch to do that . . . it is easy to be a good training ground player, you need to be a good match player, and that was probably the most worrying thing,” he said of last week’s collapse against the league leaders.

There is no shame in losing to a better side – and Shelbourne were head and shoulders, and even knees and toes, above United last week. It was the manner of defeat that irked the most: the sloppy passing, the lazy tackling, the pathetic marking, the lack of movement, a sense that players, while maybe hurting at their teammates’ shortcomings, were not hurting enough from their own.

And you get the sense that, 10 games into the season, Caulfield has seen enough and has had enough.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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