David Sneyd reports from Tolka Park

JOEY O’BRIEN INSISTS Shelbourne will learn from tonight’s 3-0 defeat to Qarabag in their Champions League qualifier but wants his players to get rid of some of the fear from their performance in Azerbaijan next week.

This second qualifying round tie looks to be beyond them after conceding two goals inside the final 10 minutes at Tolka Park.

While O’Brien praised the quality of the Azerbaijani opponents he

“There is a time where you respect an opposition, that doesn’t mean you go gung ho and go off them ridiculously. For me, respect on a football pitch is a fear. You are afraid of the mistake, or afraid of the outcome of what might happens. I have no time for that. I said it to the lads, it’s the way I was as a player and a coach and I want to be as a manager. I wanted to make sure in the second half, that we had a right cut off them and for large periods I thought we did that.”

Qarabag’s class shone through, even if two defensive lapses played a part in Shels’ late collapse.

“It’s quality, you are preparing them. You’ve seen the video, you are doing as much as you can, the lads knew what they were playing against. You would have known the style of play. Until you get on the pitch, you get so familiar against players in the league week in, week out. You are coming up against these boys, you never see it until they are on the pitch.

“The level they operate at is higher than our domestic football. The touch, the speed. You see that in the first 10, 20 minutes and get a feel for it in the game, you realise you can’t make that first pass, or second pass and need to go direct and get down the sides of them, that’s where we got the benefit of that.”

A place in the Europa League third round is now the most likely port of call in Shelbourne’s European run and O’Brien believes a night like this will stand to his side.

“These games, they are so demanding, your fitness level goes up. Your mind, your concentration. It happens because it’s the level you are operating it. It’s sink or swim time. The learnings, with this game, and the next week, following on with more games. You’ve got to do that. We’ve got to learn from the mistakes because there’s another few weeks of this and a huge game coming down the line.”

O’Brien was also adamant any player struggling for motivation going into the second leg next week won’t be in his plans.

“If they have a problem with their motivation, they won’t be on the plane. That won’t obviously happen. It’s a huge game, another game, Champions League round two, second leg away from home, stuff you dream of as a kid, I’d love to think they are already thinking about it, and see if they can go over and take learnings from who they were up against and if they were disappointed in their own performance, try and put out a better performance next week.”