Raging East Kilbride boss Kevin Rutkiewicz branded his side as “an absolute disgrace” after they lost 1-0 at East Stirling in the Lowland League on Wednesday night.
It’s a costly defeat for the K-Park side, leaving them languishing in sixth place, just days after Rutkiewicz said they can’t afford any more slip-ups if they are to get back in the title race.
Rutkiewicz branded the performance ‘feeble’, said performances like those aren’t sustainable at East Kilbride, and hinted that East Stirling wanted the three points more.
He told the club’s website: “It’s terrible. I’m not going to hide from the fact that I said it’s the start of a defining week for us.
“It’s just an abject failure that lies with me and with the players. They have to take responsibility and certainly I’ll take my share of that – I picked the team, set them up and it isn’t good enough on the night.
“It’s just a terrible, terrible, feeble performance with what was at stake for us, and it looked like they had a lot more at stake tonight than we did.
“We’re had a conversation in there and we’ll continue conversations, but I’m hugely disappointed.
“I’m not going to say they’re working harder , as such, but it looks that way at times, the East Stirling boys.
“They ran themselves into the ground, played very well and deserved the win. I’m not going to deny that.
“It’s our job at the side to try and find solutions and there was no point in going like-for-like because they just weren’t good enough.
“Some of the performances were just an absolute disgrace.
“I’m not going to hide from that criticism either, I tar myself with the exact same brush with that performance as my players.
“We just have to be better than that, and it’s not sustainable for anybody at this club to churn out performances like that.”
East Kilbride host Dalbeattie Star on Saturday and Rutkiewicz says the defeat makes this game even more important.
He said: “We have to win. We have to be prepared to do the hard yards.
“I’m saying the same things a lot, which is a worry, and less so for the boys that have just come through in the last couple of weeks – there’s an adjustment period for them – but we have enough players in the squad who have been here all season to know what it’s all about.
“That’s the fourth game... there have been 12 points this season that have just shook me to my core a wee bit, and that’s with the greatest of respect to the teams involved.
“But if we have aspirations of where we want to be we have to be winning and we’ve fallen way short on each of those four occasions.
“You’re going to lose games in a season, you’re going to draw games, of course, but there’s ways in which you want your team to lose.
“We’re not doing the right things and we’re not losing in the right way, giving every ounce of ourselves.”
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