BOHEMIANS HAVE GATHERED momentum, and last night’s derby victory against Shamrock Rovers was their fourth win in five games. The run of form has lifted them to within seven points of league leaders Saint Patrick’s Athletic, as they make ground on the top after an indifferent start to the season. 

“We are in a good place and all we can do is look after our own results”, said Bohs boss Keith Long after last night’s 1-0 victory at Dalymount Park.

“Thankfully we were able to do that, I think it was important to follow up on Friday, and we have a big game in Sligo on Saturday.” 

Long wasn’t getting carried away with the fact Bohs have snapped a three-game losing streak against their fierce rivals, either. 

“It’s sort of irrelevant. It is a derby and it’s brilliant for the supporters here tonight, and it gives them the bragging rights for the moment, but we have to try and win matches and climb the table if we can.” 

There were 100 Bohs fans permitted to attend, and they were there to witness a game settled by a second-goal from Georgie Kelly. 

“We started well, in the first five minutes”, reflected Long. “Then Rovers just went long and put us on the back foot. We just needed to be a bit more decisive and stronger, and win headers and be big with our clearances. We probably didn’t do that, our centre-halves got bumped off a little bit, and we didn’t collect enough second balls in that period. But we grew into it. 

“We were competitive. I thought we could play better at times. Their press was good, it was aggressive, and we had to try and play through it, and I thought the goal was a great example of how we have been playing in recent games. It was a well-worked goal and well finished by Georgie.” 

Bohs lost a number of influential players ahead of this season, most notably winger Danny Grant, striker Andrew Wright and defender Dan Casey, and Long was unmoved when asked if his side are in fact better now than they were a year ago. 

“I don’t know, that’s for other people to speculate. We are playing a brand of football that is quite pleasing, we have good technical players who can play and want to get on the ball, and we can play through the likes of Dawson [Devoy] and Ali [Coote], and Liam [Burt] is a good technical player down the side.

“We have fellas who want the ball. We have tried to evolve as a team and playing fast, attacking football is what we’re about. We want to try and dominate the ball a little more. But some of the goals have been really high-quality stuff, when you scratch the surface and look at the build up play.

“We have a young side, we’ve lost some players, but we have done that perennially over the years, as players have come into the team, done well and progressed their careers through being at the club. It is difficult to replace those players. Are we a better side? We’ll see at the end of the season.” 

The Bohs boss also says there may be further change to come in the summer transfer window. 

“We’ll see what happens. Stephen Mallon would have been a great option off the bench tonight but he shipped a knock in the game against Drogheda. There will probably be players going and maybe some incomings, we have a couple of things in the pipeline but at the moment we are pleased with the players we have, there’s a lot of growth in this team, I think. It was important to get a result tonight as we are a young side.  

“I thought we managed the game a little better than we have in previous games this year.”