Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley delivers damning verdict on League of Ireland title race
Shamrock Rovers are five points behind Shelbourne ahead of Sunday's crucial Premier Division clash.
Stephen Bradley has delivered a brutally honest assessment of this year’s League of Ireland title race.
The Shamrock Rovers manager reckons the standard of the teams at the top this season isn’t a patch on recent years - and he includes his five-in-a-row chasing side in that.
Leaders Shelbourne, Rovers’ opponents this evening, can pick up a maximum of 66 points (1.8 points per game), as long as they win their four remaining games.
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However Damien Duff’s men have picked up just two points from the last 12 available to them.
When Rovers won the title last year, they did so with 72 points (2 points per game), twelve months earlier they amassed 79 points (2.2), 78 (2.16) in 2021 and in the shortened 2020 season they claimed 48 points (2.66).
And Dundalk finished in the high 80s in 2019 and 2018.
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Bradley said: “For the neutral I think it’s great that it’s so competitive right until the last day it will be, it’s very competitive and in the mix.
“But I think if we’re being honest, the standard hasn’t been great, has it? To have the points total where we are now, all of us, is interesting. It hasn’t been great.
“We can’t speak about other clubs because we’re part of that and our form has been up and down and patchy, so we’re part of it.
“For the neutral it’s great, but for the overall standard of the league has it been great? I don’t think it has.”
Derry City are four points behind Shelbourne, but have five games remaining, and their boss Ruaidhri Higgins has put the low tallies this year down to stronger squads all around.
“I don’t think so,” Bradley countered. “That’s a bit of disrespect to us and what came before.
“You remember John (Caulfield)’s team at Cork coming here and it was nearly over by summer (in 2017), Stephen (Kenny)’s team went, we were 12 ahead of Dundalk at one point and they went on a run of 18 games maybe to win it, those were the levels.
“And then we took over and we went unbeaten in one season - I know it was a curtailed season - and there were times in others where we went on runs of 12 or 13 games.
“So I think that’s always been the case but this year no one has managed to do that. I think that’s probably a poor reflection on the teams out in front.”
According to Bradley, this season’s form, which has seen them lose nine of their 32 games so far, will be a one-off.
“I don’t think we’ll ever - us - I know where we’ve gone wrong so we’ll never have a season like this,” he insisted.
“Where did it go wrong? I think that’s for the end of the season to come out and talk. We’ve been reviewing it, we fully understand where we went wrong and I’ve no problem talking about it at the end of the season.
“But I think it’s, yeah, we definitely know where we’ve been off it.
“It hasn’t happened in five years and I can’t see it happening again. It won’t happen again because we know where we have gone wrong.”
Bradley admits today’s game is a must-win for Rovers if they are to harbour any hopes of winning another Premier Division title.
“We have to win. Losing against Pat’s means there is no margin for error now,” he said, referencing the recent 3-0 defeat.
“We’re still in it somehow. But now we win Sunday and it’s game-on. But we have to win Sunday. If we don’t win Sunday, I’d imagine that will be us out of it.”
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