Reaction

Yesterdays result and display against Livingston was a huge disappointment, the team are now seven points from safety at the bottom of the league and have certainly now made it even more difficult for the team to retain their Championship status, on the day the team under performed and paid dearly for individual mistakes, we are a far better team than yesterdays performance and it was an uncharacteristic performance to what the team have shown in recent weeks. We still have ten league matches left, with a another big game on Tuesday evening against a Dumbarton side, who have just defeated Hibernian 3-2, we now need to pick up points, the players and fans will be hurting so Tuesday nights game if we can win can readdress this very quickly.

jack ross after defeat to livingston

Losing two goals so early in the match didn’t help, but it was more down to the fact we didn’t play well today, if you don’t play well it is always difficult to get something from a game, it’s not to detract from the fact Livingston played well but you only really look at your own side and definitely after the kind of performances we have been producing over the past few months we were well below that today, it was more than losing the two early goals it was just the overall performance, if you have as many players, as we had today that didn’t play to their capabilities then it is going to be difficult to take anything from the match.

I now have to look the lift the players before Tuesday’s night’s game against Dumbarton, I have just finished speaking to the players in the dressing room after the match, it is my responsibility to lift them, as it would be for any manager, if we had won today it would not have defined our season where we would finish, but losing the game makes it more difficult, however if we go and win on Tuesday and other results go your way we will be back to where we started before today’s game, so that’s something we have to look at, it’s an incentive for us, all we can control is our own results and our focus always has been in trying to win games and see where that took us. Today is a disappointment, it is a huge disappointment but we are fortune we have a game on Tuesday, a game which we will need to try and win.

The goal just before half-time was a real disappointment, because I think at that time we were probably enjoying as good a spell we had in the game without still playing particularly well, we looked more likely to nick an equaliser than conceding another and that makes the second half difficult, we huffed and puffed in the second half but never really created very much and as the game goes on you become a bit stretched and the team who are winning create things on the break and that happened. We have defended well over the last couple of months but today individual mistakes cost us, which happens in football, but it was more than the mistakes but how you react to it within the ninety minutes and then in games beyond that.

We made mistakes at crucial times, the players know that and it cost us today. Michael Duffy has played better for us in games this season but it was good for him to get his goal, that is a plus for him, so we dust ourselves down and will go again on Tuesday.