Healy to bide his time at the Brandywell

Derry City manager Felix Healy will remain at the Brandywell, for the immediate future at least, following a lengthy meeting between him and his board of directors last night.

Healy reported back to the directors on a three-hour meeting he had had with the club's players the previous evening at the Trinity Hotel in the city and told them that the problems he had felt existed over the last few weeks had been cleared up to his satisfaction.

"The meeting was positive, constructive, open and honest," said Healy yesterday. "It did a lot of good for everybody". That seems to have reassured the club's chairman, Kevin Friel, and the rest of the board and after last night's meeting Friel said he was pleased to hear that the differences between then players and their coach had been resolved and that "Felix remains the manager of the club and continues to enjoy the support of the board".

How long that support will continue, admitted Healy, depends on how quickly the team improves its current form. Since the start of the league campaign City, champions two seasons ago, have won just two matches - both against newly-promoted sides - and the former striker knows that things need to get better over the coming weeks during which the northerners take on UCD, local rivals Finn Harps and Sligo Rovers.

"Results are important for every manager," remarked Healy yesterday, "and I have to pay particular attention to the way we perform over the next while. Hopefully we can start to improve things now, though."

Healy has come close to quitting on more than one occasion previously and many locals felt he would go rather than administer the enormous budgetary cutbacks that were imposed on him over the close season.

At Dundalk, meanwhile, there was growing pressure on manager Jim McLaughlin last night with one director and a group of supporters both making clear their dissatisfaction with the current set-up in letters to the board.

Nicky Coffey, a journalist with RTE who has been involved with the club for several years could not attend last night's meeting of directors at Oriel Park, but is reported to have expressed his desire to see a change in the management structures in the near future.

The committee of the Travel Club, an officially recognised group of supporters who organise trips for supporters and raise funds for the team, also made it clear in a second letter to the meeting that they no longer had confidence in the current line-up of McLaughlin, Tommy Connolly and Willie Crawley.

The trouble comes 11 games into a season in which Dundalk have yet to record a victory. As at Derry, the club's ongoing financial difficulties have severely restricted the current manager's ability to buy his way out of trouble and McLaughlin's cause has not been helped by the fact that the club's most highly-rated player, Brian Byrne, picked up a serious injury in the first game of the League Cup campaign. He has not played since and is expected to be out for most of the season.

Ironically, the timing of McLaughlin's difficulties at Oriel Park could mean that, should Healy leave City over the coming weeks, his former mentor at the Brandywell, would be offered another spell in the Derry job.

Waterford United, whose former boss Tommy Lynch is also likely to be interested in any managerial vacancies at other clubs, expect to advertise their vacant manager's job over the coming week with some advertisements possibly appearing in the press here and in Britain before the weekend.

While the club waits to fill the position on a long-term basis, a caretaker manager will be appointed with a club spokesperson saying yesterday that at least one candidate had been approached and that an interim appointment would be made over the "next day or so".

Lynch, meanwhile, said he is currently open to offers from other National League clubs. Management, the 34-year-old said yesterday, remained his long-term ambition but "I'm not in a position to sit back and play golf, I have to work and I still believe that I have something to offer a lot of clubs here as a player.

"If it came to it," he added, "I'd have to look at going back to England but my family have settled back here at home and, ideally, I'd like to think I'll get something within the game here."