Albion Rovers boss blasts 'naive' side for blowing game at East Stirling

The Coatbridge side capitulated as they fell to defeat in Falkirk

Furious Sandy Clark blasted his ‘naive’ Albion Rovers side after they blew a 2-1 lead to lose 3-2 at East Stirling, and said silly mistakes are killing them.

Rovers bounced back from an early goal at the Falkirk Stadium to lead through strikes from Adam Fernie and Bright Prince, only to capitulate with two goals in the last eight minutes.

The Coatbridge club’s misery was compounded when Barry Duncan saw red for a second booking in the last minute.

That leaves Rovers 14th in the Lowland League table, and though they have as many as five games in hand over rivals, Clark isn’t taking consolation from that after his former side inflicted a fifth defeat in 15 games.

He said: “Frustrating is the right word. The goals we conceded were really poor.

“We’re going through a spell where we seem to be getting punished big-time for every mistake, but we are making mistakes, and that gives the other team an opportunity.

“That’s where the frustration comes from.

“I keep saying we’re a young team, and we are, but we’ve got to learn, and learn quickly, because the results recently, while there haven’t been a lot of defeats as far as the league goes, there haven’t been enough wins.

“It’s something we need to try and address as we go along.

“We lost a goal really early on and it’s a really poor goal to lose. It’s not quite like us, but it happened.

“We’ve done well to get back into the game, we did well to get in front, and we should have been able to manage the game in the last 10 minutes and get through it.

“That’s the bit where we’re very naive, we need to learn that we have

to improve in that kind of situation. We scored two goals, it’s a case of stop giving away goals. We’re getting punished from making mistakes, so we’ve got to eliminate the mistakes.

“We’re making far too many, and we need to look at it.

“Credit to East Stirling – they threw the ball into the box from two corners and a free kick and got three goals. Other than that they didn’t cause us any problems, and that’s the frustrating and annoying part of it.

“It’s a sore one for our supporters. It’s a game we should have got something from, and in reality we haven’t, so we need to improve, we need to do better.”

Duncan’s dismissal will see him suspended for the visit by Cowdenbeath on Saturday, though Arnie Kasa returns from his own suspension.

Rovers follow up that clash with a Boxing Day visit to leaders East Kilbride, but Clark isn’t looking that far ahead.

He said: “It’s two yellow cards, he’s on the first one and he knows he’s on it. Barry’s a young lad, a young player, he’s very inexperienced and it’s a silly challenge.

“He’s given away a free kick on the edge of our box when we’re chasing the game. He’s cost us the last bit of the game and that’s him suspended, so it’s a learning one for him, as well.

“Cowdenbeath are similar to where we are in the league, a similar situation club-wise, so it’s a game that’ll be tight. We’ll look at the EK game after that.”

Clark had hoped there would be scope in January to eat into some of their backlog, but says that’s now up in the air.

He said: “I’m not sure what’s going to happen because there’s the Lowland League Cup and there are fixtures in there somewhere, so we’ll have to look at all that as well and see where we are.

“In the league you are where you deserve to be. The games in hand are a big factor, but you’ve got to win them to move up the league.

“We’re confident we can do that, but at the moment you are where you are and recently results we’ve dropped a lot of points that we shouldn’t have.

“We have to learn from it if we’re going to make any kind of impact on the league.”

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