Katie McCabe gutted after ‘completely unacceptable’ Ireland defeat

Katie McCabe has said Ireland’s performance against Slovenia was ‘completely unacceptable’ and that they’ll be going ‘back to the drawing board’ after a big defeat on Tuesday.

Slovenia, who sit 14 places below Ireland in the FIFA rankings, crushed Ireland 4-0 in the Nations League on what the new Ireland manager Carla Ward called ‘a horrible night’ in Koper.

Captain Katie, who was deployed in an attacking midfield role for the opening half before reverting to left-back, said after the match: ‘That was completely unacceptable by our standards.

‘We can’t start games like that. It’s back to the drawing board. The goals were completely avoidable, I think we gifted them their chances and we need to be better.

‘We’re trying a new system and we are going to make mistakes but we need to be brave on the ball. It was important to come out in the second half and play with a bit more pride.

‘But we’re at the start of a journey with Carla and the coaching staff coming in and there will be hiccups but it shouldn’t have been that big a margin.’

Becoming passionate and letting a swear word slip out, Katie continued: ‘We’ll pick ourselves up, we are a great bunch of players and girls, and I know the girls f***ing love… sorry, absolutely love playing for their country. We won’t put in a performance like that again.’

New manager Carla also admitted her team’s first-half performance was ‘unacceptable’ as a superb Slovenia consigned Ireland to their heaviest defeat in seven years.

The Irish boss accepted full responsibility for a shambolic opening half that saw her team concede three goals inside the first 34 minutes.

‘It’s on me,’ Carla said. ‘You can’t have a half of football like that first half and expect to win the game. It is a horrible night, but it is a huge learning curve at the minute.

‘I tried something different, something to get us to create more, but it didn’t pay off. It was not the system, it was maybe a couple of players in different positions and trying something a little bit different. We won’t just rip it up, we have to own it and take responsibility and make sure that half of football never happens again.’

Carla has moved away from the back five which was favoured by all three of her predecessors, but the wisdom of that was questionable as the slick Slovenians tore Ireland apart time and again. However, the former Aston Villa boss insists she won’t compromise on her philosophy.

‘I think you could see across both games what we’re trying to do. ‘My philosophy has been the same and has served me well at all the clubs with very little resources,’ Ward said. ‘It’s just about adapting. It’s a new era for this group. There are some leaders who have gone too and that takes its toll. There’s a lot to consider.’

A delighted Slovenian manager Sasa Kolman said: ‘I knew we could win, I felt it, but I had no idea we could win by that much. We knew we’d have space. To start with six points, in my craziest dreams I didn’t think it would be like that.’