The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Woeful Staggies were not good enough, says Brown
Adams misses pressing engagement as goalkeeper faces music
Not good enough.
Just three words were all it took for Ross County goalkeeper Mark Brown to sum up his side’s 4-2 Scottish Premiership home defeat by Dundee United yesterday.
County were 3-0 down at half-time and four goals down with 20 minutes remaining before Ivan Sproule and Rocco Quinn reduced the arrears, but there was no denying United were worthy winners at Victoria Park.
County manager Derek Adams refused to face the media after the match and Brown said: “The manager read the riot act at halftime but I don’t think he needed to say too much.
“The players knew. I don’t think any of us can look ourselves in the mirror and say i t was good enough. The scoreline reflected that.
“It’s a disappointing result. It’s hard to say there are positives to be taken, but their goalkeeper had a couple of great saves.
“We hit the post twice and a had a couple of reasonably good shouts for a penalty although we know the goals we conceded weren’t good enough defensively.”
Brown has urged his team-mates to take the positives of the last 20 minutes when they scored twice to halve the deficit.
He said: “There are positives to be taken.
“We came back. At 4-0, it would have been easy on a wet, windy day just to chuck it and end up losing more goals.
“But I thought we battled away and at no stage gave up.
“That’s the positive to take forward into the next few weeks.”
County were aggrieved at referee Brian Colvin’s decision not to award a penalty at 2-0 when Kevin Luckassen went down under a challenge from United captain Sean Dillon.
Adams was furious with the decision at the time but was unwilling to give this thoughts on the incident or the game. However, his goalkeeper believes the call was a sore one to take for his side.
Brown added: “It looked like a penalty from where I was and the players thought it was, but it’s a hard job being a referee.
“We’ll look at it again on television and if it turns out it was a penalty then it is just bad luck on the day.
“We might have been back to 2-1 but football’s like that. Sometimes you get decisions, sometimes you don’t.
“That’s whatmakes it the game it is. It’s not always black and white.”