Firm reminder – but County are still holding up

Ross County co-manager Stuart Kettlewell accepts the Staggies must learn from their Old Firm battering.

But Kettlewell insists his team can draw great encouragement from a strong start to Premiership life across the first 11 matches.

The Dingwall men, ripped apart by Rangers on Wednesday night and

Celtic 11 days before, have now squared up to every top-flight team once.

T h e y a p p r o a c h tomorrow’s trip to Hamilton sitting seventh place in the table, with Kettlewell eager to lift the players quickly for another crucial test.

The disappointment of defeat remained acute for the 35-year-old yesterday morning, just 12 hours on from the final whistle against Steven Gerrard’s Rangers side.

But with several latenight reruns of the 4-0 defeat already behind him, Kettlewell was able to digest the poor performance and set it in perspective.

He said: “It’s still pretty raw, obviously. There are ways to lose a game of football and I don’t think we did ourselves a great deal of justice.

“In the first 20 minutes, I felt we’d set the tone OK and were doing all right – but against the Old Firm the game can be taken away from you very quickly.

“It is so important the players understand what went wrong but very quickly pick ourselves up and prepare for Saturday.

“It can become a little bit clouded by feeling sorry for ourselves.

“That’s us played every team in the league now. If we evaluate that first period, I think we’ve only lost to one team we expected to compete with – Livingston.

“Outwith that, the three defeats were Rangers here and Aberdeen and Celtic away. We have to place everything in perspective.

“The statistics could say we’ve not won in five games or that we’ve only lost twice in seven.

“What I look at is that we have competed in most games and given a good account of ourselves in most games.

“What we can’t shy from is that, in the games we’ve lost, there has been too big a gulf on the day. We have to rectify that going into the next quarter.”

Stuart Kettlewell