Reaction

Having enjoyed great success in last season’s Petrofac Cup by reaching the final for the 3rd time, it was therefore disappointing to lose to Elgin City in Wednesday’s 2nd round tie at the Indodrill Stadium. Manager Danny Lennon made 8 changes to his team who had started against Rangers on the Sunday, this was n opportunity for some of the players which started the Petrofac Cup tie that they are ready to step up to the first team. “The Wasps” had only ever met Elgin City in the tournament back in July, 2004 when they won 2-0 through goals by Brown Ferguson & Ross Hamilton. However on the evening, although Alloa enjoyed the bulk of the play and possession there was no cutting edge. The game went into extra time with the visitors looking for an opportunity to edge in front, the turning point in the game was when referee George Salmond awarded a penalty after initially appearing to play advantage, until David Crawford pulled off a fantastic save and he pulled the play back. Alloa pushed even more strongly looking for the equaliser but were again punished when Elgin City were awarded their second penalty of the evening.

DANNY LENNON AFTER ELGIN GAME

Very much disappointed, to put a lot into the game and have so much possession but I have to give a lot of credit to Elgin City, they have come with a game plan and it has worked terrifically well for them, although we had a lot of possession of the ball, our clear cut chances have not really come and probably our best chance came in the last two or three minutes of the game, that’s credit to Elgin City and they have had a fantastic start to the season, you see a lot of bigger clubs going out to lesser opposition in these early cup games so it is disappointing from our point of view, we didn’t capitalise on the possession we had and I thought the two penalty decisions they came at very crucial times in the game and I would like to see them again, but going through my mind at this point of time that both of them were soft, to be perfectly honest. I think there was contact in the first one, but the referee then allows the player to get a strike off, for me then they have had their advantage.

We now  go into another tough game on Saturday at Kirkcaldy against Raith Rovers, who also lost last night and I said to our players that both managers will be looking for a reaction, it’s been a frustrating start but I can’t keep using the same line that – we have 14 new players and its going to take time, what we have to do is, galvanise, there is pleasing things which we are doing but there are a lot of things that the players aren’t taking on board, we are asking them, and that is part of a manager and coaches job to keep repeating and repeating until it clicks, but a very disappointing start to the season for us we are now looking for everyone, even outside the players at the club, to make sure we can bounce back. We had two difficult opening league games against teams expected to do well this season, but they are out the road and we see the league now opening up, for we now believe we will have a better opportunity to start collecting league points, let’s hope we can start this on Saturday but we need to up our game, I thought we got the ball into great areas tonight but more often than not our final ball let us down, we will certainly work on that and look to put right for Saturday. What was pleasing tonight, is I thought young Ryan Hoggan had a fantastic debut and it was good for him to get that under his belt he certainly looks to have a bright future at this football club and in the game.

We are back in tomorrow night, it is a tough schedule, I have said continuously in the last interviews it is difficult for the opportunities to work with these guys, but Elgin are not any different and they came down with a game plan and it has worked for them. You can have all the possession you like but you have got to make it count, we got into good areas where I felt we could then perhaps get a wee bit of quality to cause them problems but the final quality did not come and at least we know what we need to do to make it right.