Stephen Kenny laments slow start which cost his team dearly

Stephen Kenny said that his players have no option now but to go to Tel Aviv and show that they "are good enough" for the knockout stages after a performance in Tallaght that fell well short of what was required.

“They’re obviously very disappointed at the moment but we can’t get away from that,” he said. “To get into the Europa League was a huge ambition and to get there was terrific but when you get into the position to qualify from the group you want to grasp it and we knew a victory tonight would have put us in a very strong position.

“We obviously didn’t do enough to win the game. We looked as though we hadn’t played in a few weeks. In the first 20 minutes, that’s certainly the way it looked.

“I can’t remember us starting a game so poorly,” he continued. Through the first few minutes we made some mistakes and needed to see out that period and get a foothold in the game but unfortunately we conceded.

"But we got back into it playing some good football in the first half and were a bit unfortunate not to equalise. That said," he added, "AZ had plenty of chances and Gary Rogers probably kept us in the game."

Dundalk can still go through to the last 32 but they need a favour from Zenit. If the Russians win in the Netherlands then a score draw or win would be enough for the Irish side.

“That’s the situation that we’re in now,” said Kenny. “We have to go to Israel and show that we’re good enough.”