East Kilbride Thistle boss Aaron Connolly branded their defeat to Larkhall Thistle an “abomination” after they were on the receiving end of a second 6-1 hammering by their rivals this season.
Connolly’s side had just a David Gray penalty to show for their efforts at Gasworks Park on Saturday as Larkhall repeated their dominant display from the Showpark encounter in August, which came during Garry O’Hanlon’s spell in the hot-seat.
And the current boss has been left deflated by the second half display in particular, as they failed to build on a battling 5-4 win at Kello Rovers last week in the West of Scotland League Third Division.
Connolly said: “I thought first half we were in the game and competed fairly well, played the better football, but giving a soft goal away from a set-piece early on gave us a mountain to climb - like we seem to enjoy doing recently.
“I came in at half-time thinking we had a good chance of getting something out of the game.
“But the second half was an abomination of a performance.
”It was really disappointing all round. It is not often I’ve had to have a go at the players since I’ve come in, but we just lost so many cheap goals.
“I felt on Saturday it was a throwback to the early part of the season.
“I thought we had turned a corner from performances like that.
“At Kello the week before we lost goals, but we got back into the game and won, but we just didn’t do that on Saturday.
“I’m not going to get too down about it, the same as I don’t get to high when we’ve had winning runs.”
EK Thistle have been hampered by a number of exits recently, most notably Jamie Longworth leaving to take up a new career opportunity teaching in Dubai and Sean Winter calling time on his stint having briefly come out of retirement.
"It would have changed the game entirely.
Connolly believes that hasn’t helped his side but insists there is still enough quality in the squad than their ninth-place standing in the table suggests.
He added: “We are at a point where there has been a lot of change in the squad, there is a lot of youth there.
“There has been a number of players go in the past couple of months, with Jamie pursuing a career opportunity in Dubai. The club and myself are absolutely delighted for him.
“We had a squad of 26 or 27 in September but now we are down to 18 or 19 and a lot of them are teenagers.
“Some players have been thrust in earlier than they perhaps normally would but that is the situation we find ourselves in as a club.
“There is a real inconsistency but we’ve still got good players in there and hopefully we start picking up results again.
“I don’t concern myself too much with league tables. I treat each individual game as it comes. I won’t concern myself with where we can finish and where I want to finish, we’ve just got to look at picking up points in each game as it comes.”
Thistle are not in action this weekend and Connolly reckons it has come at the right time as they start preparing for the visit of Newmains on November 19.
He said: “I think having a free week might actually help us get some time on the training pitch together to work on a few things before we go into our next game.
"The break hasn’t come at a bad time because the amount of goals we are conceding is disappointing.
“Maybe this will let us correct things and build from there.”
Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport on Twitter via @LanLiveSport, like us on Facebook or find us on Instagram for the latest sports news, pictures and video.
