No-one else to blame but us, says Malky
Ross County are still propping up the Premiership following their defeat in Ayrshire but manager Malky Mackay, while pleased with aspects of his team’s performance, believes they have only themselves to blame for not heading back to the Highlands with at least a point to show for it.
They remain the lowest scorers in the top tier but it was their defensive deficiencies which concerned him here.
“I look at the goal again and it’s not good the way we lost it,” he claimed. “We gave the ball back to them three times and then unfortunately, my goalkeeper, who has been terrific for me, slipped because he’s picking it up.
“He still gets back up and nearly gets to the ball. It’s one of those where we will look at the goal on Tuesday morning and there will be five different people who’ll be told: ‘If you did something different there that’s not a goal’.
“We then lost Ross Callachan – probably my most influential player – right at the start.
“They then definitely came into it, and that’s when we were under the cosh for a period. I thought we dug our way back out of that again for the last 10 or 15 minutes of the first half, and that’s where we had chances.
“I thought we were terrific in the second half. We showed real character. To come here and create the amount of chances we did, I can’t ask for any more than that. If we were coming away from that having not created anything, I would hold my hands up.
“Maybe they were taking me too literally because I told them to make the goalkeeper make saves – and he made about five.”
Mackay is confident his team will soon be climbing away from the drop zone.
“It’s good to play the way we’ve been playing and keep getting into those wide areas high up the pitch,” he said. “I thought Yan Dhanda was terrific when he came on, and he would have capped it off with a worldie.
“We were winning a lot of second balls against a team who are very big on that, so it’s one of those things. I can’t be too down and disappointed by my team because of the manner we applied ourselves. We just need to be more clinical.”