Derry City manager Ruaidhri Higgins admitted a "reboot" was needed after defeat in the Sports Direct FAI Cup final capped a desperately disappointing end to the season.
The Candystripes, who slumped to a fourth place finish in the SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division after winning just one of their final eight league games, have missed out on Europe entirely following Sunday's 2-0 loss to pre-match underdogs Drogheda United in the cup showpiece.
Speaking to RTÉ soccer correspondent Tony O'Donoghue after the final whistle, a despondent Higgins said things would need to change at Derry and vowed that they would bounce back.
"It's clear that it needs a refresh, it needs a reboot," he said.
Manager Ruaidhrí Higgins doesn't try to sugarcoat the Candystripes' late-season collapse
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) November 10, 2024
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"The squad, I'm sure we'll all work hard to try and do that and come back stronger.
"In these situations, you can either roll over or you can dig in and fight and scrap.
"I think the city that we're from, there's only one way we know."
Addressing the downturn in results during the run-in, he added: "There's no getting away from it. Three or four weeks ago, we had the opportunity to win two trophies and ultimately we've come up short and it's been a really, really disappointing end to the season and we have to take it on the chin."
Higgins praised the Candystripes support who travelled down to Dublin en masse for the final.
But on the flip side, the inability of players to lay a glove on Drogheda consistently through the 90 minutes disappointed the manager.
"Ultimately we had quite a bit of the ball throughout the game but we didn't carve them open often enough," he said.
"We didn't disrupt their structure. We did have two really good chances at 0-0 that in cup finals you need to take. They've very few chances but when they got them, they took them and they punished us but we've got to take one or two of those chances and it's a different game."
Earlier, speaking on the RTÉ match coverage, former Derry City player Gareth McGlynn didn't hold back in his assessment of the team's performance, saying they had "let the city down and let the manager down."
Gareth McGlynn: "The Derry City players have let the city down tonight, they've let the manager down and they've let the chairman down, and it's not good enough."
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