It’s good to talk but Paul wants a lot more from Rothes

Rothes chairman Iain Paul has admitted that he did sit down and have a frank discussion with manager Steven MacDonald after the Speysiders’ recent poor run of form.

Rothes have won their last two matches, scoring 10 goals in total against Lossiemouth and Nairn County, to hoist themselves into 11th place in the table. But that’s not good enough for the highly-ambitious Rothes chairman.

Paul said: “We hit a bad run. We only won one game out of 10, many of which we lost to last-minute or even injury-time goals.

“During that period there were some really stern and often tough conversations between myself and Stevie over a four of five-week period.

“I speak to him regularly anyway, and we do have a good relationship, we both tell it how it is so there’s no great issue there.

“I’m not shy to tell Stevie when I’m not happy and vice-versa, but we have invested a lot of money in the squad, we have managed to make most of the signings we targeted and there should be enough quality in our side to be in a much more elevated position than we currently find ourselves.”

Looking back on that dip in form, the Rothes chairman added: “We had a bad run, unexplained really. We put up a really good show against Annan Athletic in the Scottish Cup, and on another day we might have won that game.

“After that we suddenly went off the rails and just one win in the next 10 games followed, although we did manage a couple of draws during that period.

“We are now forecasting a points tally lower than what we eventually finished up with last season, given the additional strength of the squad, that’s just not acceptable.

“On a more positive note, I thought the boys played really well in last Saturday’s 6-1 win over Nairn County. It has given us back-to-back victories for the first time since we won four in a row earlier in the season, after a slow start.

“Scoring 10 goals in two games, and only conceding once, really is a timely boost for the club and the fans at this stage of the season.

“We need to drive forward and beat all the teams ahead of us in the league table as we’re only two thirds of the way through the season.

“A top-six finish is now out of the equation, but we definitely will be looking to finish in the top half of the table again this term and that’s our revised target.”

Ambitious: Iain Paul