George Grierson accepted the blame for a shock defeat that ended Irvine Meadow’s cup hopes for the season.
Minnows Vale of Clyde came from behind to win Saturday’s third round South Challenge Cup tie 2-1 thanks to a last-gasp strike.
Medda played out the closing stages at Fullarton Park with 10-men after midfielder Neil Slooves was sent off.
But boss Grierson insisted that had no bearing on the result after a nightmare 90 minutes.
Meadow have now crashed out of all four available cup competitions.
Grierson said: “We got what we deserved. We never really got started and never had control of the game at any point.
“We’ve spoken about what went wrong within the four walls of the dressing room but at the end of the day I pick the team and I’m big enough and ugly enough to take the blame for this.
“We’ll look at how we prepared for the tie – we thought we did everything right – but the result obviously isn’t good enough.
“I thought Neil was very unlucky to be sent off but I can’t honestly say it had any real bearing on the outcome. “
Meadow led 1-0 at half-time thanks to Connor Boyd’s close range strike but struggled to carve out many more clear-cut opportunities.
Disaster struck when Calum Gow headed into his own net to level the scoreline.
Slooves then walked for two bookings but worse was to come at the death when the Tin Pail snatched a dramatic winner on the counter attack that sparked jubilant scenes on both the pitch and the terraces.
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