Eamonn Fitzmaurice: You'd wonder do Derry want to prolong season

Former All-Ireland SFC winning manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice believes that several things have gone wrong in Derry at once and says it will take an improbable resurrection to salvage their championship.

Branded as one of the top three alongside Dublin and Kerry after winning the league in April, Derry's season has unravelled in shocking fashion since then, beginning with the four-goal Donegal ambush in Celtic Park in their Ulster opener.

The six-week hiatus was supposed to have replenished them but they were soundly beaten by serial bogey team Galway in the first game of the round-robin and followed it up with a terrible capitulation at home to Armagh on Sunday.

With three losses from three, they have the existence of the contentious preliminary quarter-finals to thank for the fact that their summer isn't already effectively over, but Fitzmaurice doubts whether they have the heart or the morale to rescue their season from here.

"I think there's a hundred things (gone wrong) with the Derry thing," the former Kerry manager said on the RTÉ GAA Podcast.

"If you strip it back and look at the facts and the nitty gritty of the situation, they're down a lot of key players, particularly their half-back line which was a springboard for them attacking-wise.

"Other teams have got more comfortable defending (them). Armagh got huge credit for their offensive game but they were outstanding defensively.

"The old Derry attack was built on those one-on-one situations and the man beating his direct opponent in front of him. Armagh didn't allow them for most of the game to beat them to create those overlaps.

"Their press is broken. It needs to be fixed. It's costing them. It cost them big-time against Donegal.

"I said on the first night of the league