Reaction

Alloa Athletic return from Somerset Park empty handed as freak goal gives all three points to home side Ayr United. “The Wasps” had started brightly in the match but the home side deservedly took the lead after 36 minutes when their top goalscorer Mark Roberts latched onto a loose ball in midfield and rifled home, indeed Ayr might have been more ahead before half-time as they were dominating play. however in the second half Alloa Athletic changed their formation and were the better side in the second period. The equalising goal came 15 minutes from time when Michael Dunlop was brought down in the box and Kevin McDonald did an perfect jon of the resultant penalty, shoting high past ex Wasps keeper David Crawford. However in a spell in the game when Alloa were on top, Ayr broke away and Scott mcLaughlin’s shot was deflected by John Grant high in the air over Stephen Robertson to give the home side a fortunate winner, Jim Lister missed the game due to influenza while Stuart Noble is stilllooking to regain fitness to get back into the side. Next Saturday “The Wasps” will face league leaders Brechin City at home and will be determined to cut the gap at the top of the table and avoid Brechin City gaining any more space at the top of the league.

allan maitland at somerset park

I don’t think it will be difficult to sum that up, I think that we were awful in the first half from the start – the first 5 or 10 minutes went well but then I thought that Ayr United were given too much space to pass the ball, we didn’t retain the ball, we lost a goal but quite frankly we could have been 2 or 3 down and I don’t think we could have complained at that, we tried to get ourselves re- organised before half time and obviously we went in at half time and managed to re-organise the shape of the team and play at pressing the game further up the park. In the second half it was just like a different team , I thought we played really well in the second half, passed the ball well, controlled the game, caused them problems – didn’t cause their goal keeper enough problems during that spell – David Crawford had a couple of saves in there during that spell, I felt they were getting stressed and we were getting chances and most of it to be fair was down to Mick Dunlop and Darren Smith in the left hand side and it wasn’t a surprise that a goal game from a penalty kick on that side of the park. We are here to win games, at that stage rather than sitting in and accepting the fact that we could get a point – our ambition is higher than that this year, so when we come to places like Ayr we are not going to settle for a point, maybe that’s the thing that cost us today . At that stage I am looking at ways of winning the game we have got two wide players who are pressing up the park as far as possible, we have got Bryan Prunty through the middle , and two mid-field players trying to support it as much as possible – there is always a possibility during that that Ayr United might get a break but getting a break which they got obviously with the goal is something that I just didn’t expect, it came completely against the run of play and I don’t think it’s what we deserved based on the second half.
I don’t think we deserved to draw the second half -I think we deserved to win the second half, whether over the piece we did enough to win the game I am not certain that is the case. I think the first 45 minutes we allowed Ayr United far too much time and allowed them to play the game at will and did not put them under enough pressure on the back of a defeat for them last week we should have been able to dictate the game better than we did but if you don’t retain the ball you can’t control the game and I think that’s basically what happened to us.