Reaction

Alloa manager Allan Maitland could not hide his disappointment at the teams opening day defeat at Gayfield against newly promoted Arbroath. This was a day when Alloa fans must have been wondering which side turned up after defeating First Division Dundee last Saturday in the Alba Challenge Cup. The Wasps started brightly and had an early chance from Jamie Stevenson which was diverted over the bar before the defence was caught flat footed and Alan Rattray gave the visitors an early lead, from then on Arbroath imposed themselves all over the park and showed they were fired up for this match. Alloa themselves had a lot of the ball but Arbroath always looked dangerous and it was a day when they took their chances and punished an Alloa side who will want to start the season again, its back to basics on Tuesday against Elgin City.

allan maitland after season opener at gayfield

Quite simple today, I think we were beaten by a team that showed more desire, hunger, more application than our team did, we have been excellent up until now in pre season and maybe some people had an inclination that they are able to turn up at places like Arbroath and play football and win the game and get back in the bus and go down the road and before you know it you are 2-0 down against a team with a desire and hunger, which was blatantly missing from our game from the start, I thought we had a great opportunity early in the game when Jamie put it over the bar, it got blocked and went over the bar, but defensively we were an absolute shambles which has been so unusual
in everything we have done in pre season and in the game against Dundee last week, we lost Iain Campbell today, but even allowing for that we have enough good players at this club to deal with these things. I think we have good players at the club who didn’t play anywhere near as well as we should have done today, second to most balls especially in the middle of the park, didn’t hold the ball up as strikers, defenders who didn’t attack the ball properly allowing them to get clear efforts on goal throughout the game not just the first half, all of that is just a recipe for one thing and that’s a defeat, a few year ago we lost heavily, very heavily to Cowdenbeath and that’s still there, it’s still in my mind and I keep reminding people of that, that chat will now be replaced by our first day at Arbroath which has been a shambles for us. We have a game against Elgin City on Tuesday night which I would have liked to utilise part of the squad for and see what other players are capable of doing but now after today we need to face Tuesday nights game as a game getting back to basics and see if we can go and play again, based on what I have seen today we are not right, we should be miles better than that and once we lose a goal, which we did last year, we have people trying to win the game all on their own and we don’t do the simple things correctly, we are not helping each other on the park, not working hard enough and if we don’t do that we are going to get beat, I’ve no qualms and that’s no disrespect to Arbroath, they were excellent and deserved their win, they took their goals well, and they could have possibly had more, I can think of a free header at the back post, the one Jellie tipped over the bar, so they were good today, they obviously had a desire to make amends for last weeks defeat and I know which game I would rather have won and it certainly wasn’t last Saturday. I think if I was any other manager in our league that thought we were going to do well, I would be picking up the paper and thinking Alloa are maybe not as good after all!