Brian Reid blasted his Albion Rovers side for throwing in their worst performance of the season against Forfar and slumping to the bottom of League Two.
The Cliftonhill side went into the clash on the back of a three-game unbeaten run, but second half strikes from ex-Rovers man Matty Aitken and Kyle Hutton earned The Loons the points and left rock bottom Rovers a point adrift of Stranraer, who they face on their return to action on October 1.
Reid is furious with the display and says his players will be put to work during the international break.
He said: “That’s the worst performance I’ve seen from us this season. We went into that game on a run of three games undefeated so there wasn’t any issues in term of confidence but we need to perform better and work harder than we did, because we made it far too easy for Forfar.
“I’m very disappointed. We had three players missing that you would expect to play - Lewis Kidd, Sean Fagan and Jack Leighfield were all out injured - but that is no excuse.
“The players on the park have got to do better and make it hard for the opposition, but we were very flat from the first whistle, we never had any energy of life about us.
“That’s not like us because usually that’s one thing you can’t accuse us of.
“But we never laid a glove on Forfar and I don’t think their goalkeeper and defence will have an easier day all season.
“That’s not acceptable and I’ve told the players that so we are looking for a big reaction now. I’m not going to sit and watch that and I’m sure the supporters are disappointed seeing that as well.
“We knew if we’d won that game on Saturday we’d have jumped a few places and we know if we’d lost it we’d probably end up bottom and that’s what happened.
“It’s a huge disappointment going into the break because that’s another Saturday we need to look at ourselves sitting bottom of the league.
“It’s not a nice feeling and it should hurt the players as well. We need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Rovers will have to stew for a couple of weeks with Reid’s men not involved in this weekend’s SPFL Trust Trophy following a first round exit to Celtic B last month.
He added: “We will do a lot of work on the training ground now and maybe play against the reserves as well ahead of the Stranraer game.
“There will be a lot of hard work getting down anyway, that’s for sure.”
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