Reaction

New Alloa Athletic manager Jack Ross, took charge of the team for the first time on Saturday and could be pleased with the determination and effort from his players, who created chances but on the day once again they just didn’t fall kindly – Connor McManus, Michael Duffy and Iain Flannigan, all could have been on the score sheet in the first half but St. Mirren went in 1-0 ahead thanks to on loan striker Lawrence Shankland’s lobbed effort. In the second half “The Wasps” again had a good spell before Saints scored a second totally against the run of play. In the end, not scoring and being punished at the other end is how the season has been so far. Scott Hynd came off the bench and had a great headed effort saved by Jamie Langfield when if “The Wasps” had got a goal back it might have been different. Jack Ross will try to assess the playing squad and will look to see what he can change in January transfer window, however the players are staying positive and know the league is still very tight but will want to turn chances into league points.

First and foremost all you want is to win the game, prior to the game I hadn’t thought about nothing else than to prepare the team to win, so naturally disappointed, mainly for the players because they put an awful lot into the match, but it is difficult for me to make comparisons because I haven’t seen the team play at home this season and had to be guided by Paddy for that, but he thought it was one of their better home performances and on another occasion we could have got something from it, it is obvious we haven’t scored a lot of goals this season, one of the things we spoke about before hand was be as positive as we can in the final third, you have to be prepared to make mistakes in that area, putting crosses in the box, having shots on goal to create things and I thought we did create chances today and I don’t think any of the chances were poor finishing. I think it was just not falling for us on the day and if they continue to work as hard as that and try and create in the final third I’m sure it will fall for them, certainly the message at the end of the game was not to go away from here in any way disappointed or downbeat because I thought there were a lot of positives to take from the game. People say they don’t look at other results but the position we are in of course it was good Livingston and Dumbarton drew, it’s a good result for us, despite the difficult season we have had we are still in touch and that’s important to keep that belief amongst the players as well.

It is the first time I have seen some of the players in competitive action and I am still getting to know some of them and I have limited time with them during the week but there were good things and not so good things. Next game is against Raith Rovers at Kirkcaldy and in this league they don’t get any easier, I went to the Morton v. Raith Rovers game last night as we will be playing Morton in the not too distant future as well and they are all good sides but I hope our players will have taken belief from today’s game the message certainly was that, it wasn’t that St. Mirren won 2-0 and the game was hugely comfortable for St. Mirren, they had to earn that victory today.

The two players who scored the goals in Lawrence Shankland and Calum Gallagher have good pedigrees and the first goal, which is always hugely important in this division was a really good finish, I think if Shankland took a touch Michael Doyle probably gets in to make a tackle but he made the decision to take it first time and it was a good finish. January, will give us the opportunity within that period to do something, we will have to try and shuffle things around but it’s like everything there is not an abundance of players, I wouldn’t just change for the sake of change it would have to improve or squad, however we don’t have a huge amount of options in certain areas of the squad which looks imbalanced and I would like to address that.

It is worrying that Jason Marr had to come off with what looked like a muscular injury, he is just back fit but Jason does well for us and he comes from a good pedigree so we will need to assess him over next couple of days and at a club where resources are less than others we just need to deal with it and move on.