Derry City manager Ruaidhrí Higgins apologised to the club's travelling support after their "unacceptable" 4-1 loss to St Patrick's Athletic at Richmond Park on Monday.
The Candystripes slipped four points behind Shamrock Rovers at the top of the Premier Division after a shambolic defeat in Inchicore, the in-form hosts having four different scorers as they racked up their sixth win in seven games.
Sitting top of the table only 10 days ago, Derry have picked up only one point in their last three games and Higgins gave a bracing assessment in the wake of their bank holiday capitulation.
"Without a shadow of a doubt, the most gut-wrenching night since I've taken over anyway, that's for sure," the Derry boss told RTÉ Sport.
"Up until 1-0, there wasn't much in the game, we were fine. But from that moment on, we lost our composure, we lost our discipline.
"It's unacceptable. Over the last couple of years, we've had a good defensive record. But we looked fragile tonight. Very, very fragile.
"Really, really poor goals from our end. Every single goal was preventable.
"We need to eradicate all those errors and become harder to beat than we were tonight. Because it's well, well, well below par and unacceptable."
In what has been an unpredictable season thus far, Derry have largely failed to capitalise on Shamrock Rovers' scratchy form early in the campaign.
Last season's runners-up have lost five times in the league, and have won just four of their 10 home games. Their form on the road had been their salvation until this week but they've now suffered back-to-back away defeats, last week against Sligo and now in the capital.
"This is an extremely difficult moment," admitted Higgins. "It's a difficult night. And you either lie down under it or you come out fighting. I hope that it's the latter.
"It's a different season. More teams are dropping more points. Five defeats is not good enough.
"I take full responsibility. I'm in charge of the team. As a group, we all take responsibility.
"We had travelling fans coming down here in good numbers today on a Monday. People probably taking the day off work to come down here.
"We done them a disservice tonight. We apologise to them. Gutted for them that they had to come down and witness that type of performance.
"We have to roll our sleeves up and dig in. People will be out to get us now and we have to fight back. We have to stick our chest out and take a bit more pride in ourselves, individually and collectively, and make sure that type of performance never happens again."
The Saints look a team transformed under Jon Daly, who said: "I'm delighted for the players, for the fans, and everyone connected with the club. It's a big result against a very, very good Derry team.
"I thought the boys were excellent and then we took our chances when they came.
"We had a couple that we probably didn't execute as well as we would have liked to give ourselves a little bit of a cushion in the first half, and when you go 2-0 up and they get the goal back, it's obviously then a tricky scoreline, but Chris Forrester stood up and got us the third goal which settled the nerves slightly."
Daly's brief tenure at the helm has yielded six wins from seven matches, but the new man in charge was eager to deflect any praise for the turnaround at the club onto his players.
"It's nothing to do with me – it's the players, the self-effacing 40-year-old insisted. "It's their workrate and the effort they put in.
"Obviously we've made little tweaks that the players have bought into. I think that's the biggest thing, that they're confident with what we're trying to do.
"Winning games of football breeds confidence and it allows the lads to feel that they're able to do it and compete at the top end of the table."
St Pat's face Kevin Doherty's Drogheda United on the road on Friday, with Daly taking nothing for granted ahead of a game that could move his side up to second in the table.
"It's going to be a difficult game," he added. "They're a good side. Kev has them playing really well and we've always kind of found it difficult against them, so we need to bring that same intensity to the game.
"If we do, then we give ourselves the best opportunity to get three points.
"We won't get carried away with this result and think that we're better than we are. We're a good side, but so are Drogheda, and it's important that we focus on that."
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