NIFL Premiership: Portadown v Cliftonville (Saturday, 3pm, Shamrock Park)  

CLIFTONVILLE manager Paddy McLaughlin is in no doubt that his team will bounce back from their shoot-out defeat to Linfield in the Co Antrim Shield. 

The Reds make the trip to Shamrock Park on Saturday afternoon to take on Portadown (3pm kick-off) before taking on Ballymena United in the semi-final of the League Cup at Solitude on Tuesday evening (7.45pm kick-off). 

McLaughlin admits his players were a bit angry with themselves for conceding an injury-time equaliser and falling to defeat against the Blues, but is tipping them to show their powers of recovery. 

“We’ve bounced back really well,” McLaughlin stated.  

“Nobody likes getting beat the boys are in there a wee bit angry with themselves and rightly so - we shouldn’t have let the game slip. 

“Hopefully they come away and respond well like they always have in previous defeats. There are good places to have that response and we’re away to Portadown. 

“It will be tough and then we’ve Ballymena in the League Cup next Tuesday night and a couple of big games coming up. If we bounce back like we always do, I’m sure this will be long forgotten about very shortly.” 

McLaughlin praised the work rate of Portadown and believes his players need to be at their best if they are going to come through another tough encounter. 

“They’re very good, especially at home,” he said. 

“They’re hard working and they’ve scored against all the top sides at home this year. 

“You’ve got to be at your strongest at the back as well as in attack because they don’t give away much either. 

“Their away form has probably let them down a wee bit, but their home form is very good, and we’ve got to prepare for that tough game. 

“They all are, and they’ve got good players that can hurt you, but we’ll dust ourselves down on Thursday night and get ready for another tough game on Saturday.”

On Tuesday evening’s shoot-out defeat, McLaughlin rued his side’s disappointing penalties and thought they would learn from their warning shot after Linfield had a goal ruled out two minutes before their equaliser in injury-time. 

“We’re disappointed with our penalties,” McLaughlin admitted.  

“The boys have been brave enough to go up and hit them, I’ll never criticise anybody for being brave enough. 

“I never hit one myself because I never had the nerve to, anybody that has the nerve to step up in a big game and a semi-final in front of a home crowd, fair play to them. We were disappointed with the penalties and that we only scored one out of five. 

“I think we got away with one because I didn’t think it was offside. I was glad that it was at the time, but I thought it was a tight, tight margin and I thought that we got out of jail, and it was a warning that we probably needed to get us over the line. Another cross came in from the same area of the pitch and we didn’t deal with it. 

“The cross came in too soft, it travelled a long distance, and we didn’t deal with it, there was a bit of a scramble, and we were just hoping for a bit of luck again. But we couldn’t keep getting lucky at that stage. 

“We were already lucky with the goal ruled off, but they’ve shown the quality and why they’re the league Champions for the last couple of years, because they didn’t give up and kept going tight to the end.” 

Although the Reds boss did feel there were some positives and insists, they won’t dwell on the defeat for too long. 

“I thought we were superb,” he added.  

“We played some really good football and had a couple of chances to make it 2-0 and put the game to bed, but Linfield dug in and seen out the danger we threw at them. They got their injury-time equaliser, and we were very disappointed, but we’ve too much going well for us in the season so we’re not going to let it drag us down. 

“We’ll move on quickly from it, we’ve got too much in the league and the League Cup semi-final coming up on Tuesday. 

“We’ve a lot of good things happening at the club, and we’ll concentrate on what we’re doing well, and we won’t be dwelling too long on what happened.”