Emmet Malone On Soccer

With his team having just two points to show for what probably looked like three winnable games before the season kicked off, Gareth Farrelly's assessment a few weeks back that it is going to take a little bit longer than originally expected to get things right at Bohemians looks even harder to disagree with now.

None of the Dublin side's performances to date have been especially poor but none have been particularly impressive either and on Friday they were rather comfortably outplayed by a Derry City side who looked much better equipped in most areas for the season ahead.

Farrelly's disappointment with the way his team had been beaten was obvious although he was frank enough about his team's shortcomings. His argument is that, when they have everybody fit, Bohemians should be a match, or close to it, for anybody and he may have a point. On Friday, though, they were without four important first-team players and the reality is that just now they don't look capable of coping with even half that number of absentees.

The number of players who left during the close season was a serious blow to a club who had established themselves as Shelbourne's chief rivals for major honours in recent seasons. The fact so many of them moved to Tolka Park must have made it all even harder to bear.

The failure of a couple of those who departed to deliver consistently over the course of last season was, as it happens, a factor in the financial difficulties endured towards the end of the campaign but, even allowing for that, it would have hard to imagine that Farrelly was going to be able to hit the ground running without being able to replace the likes of Glen Crowe, Bobby Ryan and Colin Hawkins.

Add to that the absence through injury of Farrelly himself, Thomas Heary, Tony Grant and Dominic Foley against Derry and the disappointing start is easy to understand. What is difficult to gauge, however, is just how much better things can be expected to get when so many of those who will be filling gaps over the coming months are players who still qualify to play for the under-21 side.

During his brief run out at the weekend John Paul Kelly did enough to suggest he can have a positive impact while Terry Palmer's arrival and Ken Oman's return to fitness will both help. But with numbers tight, Stephen Kenny's successor could probably do with a little more flexibility within his squad and, on the face of it, Heary and Fergal Harkin aside, he doesn't appear to have a huge amount of that at his disposal.

His own fitness is likely to be a major factor in how the team gets on. Having arrived at the club last year with a hamstring problem, Farrelly has missed two of the three games so far in this campaign and his influence was missed. With the former international playing alongside Kevin Hunt, Bohemians would probably have the best central midfield in the country. Without him they were overwhelmed at Dalymount on Friday.

When Heary returns that is the one area where Farrelly will have some real depth but even at this early point in the season the suspicion is that it will be in attack that the Dubliners are most likely to struggle.

With Crowe, who got 19 league goals last season, gone the team look to be heavily reliant on Grant and Foley. The former found the net eight times last year and needs to step up on that if he is to shoulder the burden of becoming the club's main source of goals. The latter, who managed just one after arriving in the summer, needs to discover the sort of form that made Kenny bring him back to Ireland.

If the pair do click then there is some sort of chance that this season will not be a complete washout and that the club will be able to steady themselves after the disappointment of last year.

Then, early exits from Europe and the FAI Cup combined with their failure to qualify for either the Uefa or Setanta Cups this season all contributed to a funding gap put at roughly €300,000, which necessitated the severe pruning at senior squad level.

Now, young players like Oman, Stephen Rice and Stephen Ward are set to be given the chance to prove their worth while youngsters like David Bracken, Stuart Hyland and Mark Duggan look likely to get opportunities that might well otherwise, at least for another couple of years, have eluded them.

For all the setbacks the team look well capable of finishing mid-table and the supporters would appear, judging by their mood at the opening couple of home games, to have made an appropriate adjustment to their expectations.

The hope then would be that the younger players make rapid progress on the pitch and the club start to move forward again off it with, for instance, the redevelopment of the ground at the shopping centre end set to start this year.

In the meantime, though, anything approaching a title shot would require a spectacular run without either injuries or suspensions leaving Shelbourne as the capital's only serious championship contenders.