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jim goodwin after links park defeat

It was a really poor performance from start to finish this evening, it certainly is a bit of a wakeup call for everyone.

Alan Cook had a slight calf strain it was precautionary really tonight we didn’t want to risk him, I said after the previous game against Arbroath our chances of qualifying from the group was slim, so I didn’t want to risk him tonight at Links Park and obviously after tonight’s result our chances are now dead and buried, on the night we just weren’t good enough, I’m hugely disappointed and quite shocked at the overall performance to be honest.

On Saturday we will face Hibernian, who we know are a good side, I think the group itself has been difficult obviously two Premiership teams in the group and they were huge favourites to go through before a ball was kicked and it now looks like Ross County and Hibernian will battle it out for the top two positions, we would have liked to give a better account of ourselves – I thought the performance up at Dingwall against Ross County was decent from a defensive point of view, I thought the performance in spells against Arbroath was ok without really creating too many opportunities, we dominated the ball but tonight far too many players not at it, and there are not many you could give pass marks to, so hugely disappointing.

The calibre of the goals we lost tonight was poor for the first one Stevie knows he should go and defend the ball and just clear the danger but in fairness to the Montrose player he didn’t give up, the second goal from a corner was really poor, whether there was a foul on the goalkeeper I don’t know, I’m maybe trying to clutch at straws but we didn’t work their goalkeeper enough. We should have had a penalty, I think it was a stone wall penalty which I think their boys admitted after the game as well, that it was a penalty.

We have to give credit to Montrose it’s not the way we wanted to go out of the cup we wanted to get at least a win on the board and take some confidence going into the game against Hibernian, but we need to pick ourselves up and go against Hibernian, be well organised and give a far better account of ourselves and then take confidence into our big game the opening league fixture against Raith Rovers at the Indodrill Stadium.