Rutherglen Glencairn boss Willie Harvey has warned his side they can’t afford too many more hiccups after losing to 10-man Shotts on Saturday.
But Harvey is sure the result is just a blip, and that his side will haul their way up the West of Scotland League First Division table.
Jack McIlveen’s 51st-minute strike levelled Taylor Evans’ first-half opener, despite Dean Sutherland being sent off 20 minutes in.
But Chris Meikle popped up with a winner for Shotts with 20 minutes left, leaving Harvey frustrated.
He said: “It’s a hiccup, but we can’t afford too many of those.
“We’ve got cup ties in the next few weeks and we’re going to end up doing catch-up. We don’t want to be doing that, and further down the line all of a sudden we need to go on a 10-match run or something to get back into contention.
“I’m quite confident once we settle down and get more regular league games that we will get ourselves climbing up the table.
“We’ll have a couple of games in hand that would take us to within about fifth or sixth in the league, and then we’ve got everybody above us to play.
“It’s only the start of the season, there’s a long way to go.”
Harvey wasn’t pleased with his side’s performance, though, and felt it was below the standards they had set for themselves.
He said: “We didn’t play at the levels that we had done in the weeks before, when we were really pleased with the performances.
“We felt we were a wee bit below-par on Saturday for some reason – though in saying that, we had enough chances to win the game.
“Unfortunately we didn’t take any of those chances, and a couple of errors have cost us the result.
“It’s frustrating not to capitalise on them going down to 10 men, but sometimes it goes against you, if the other team step up to the mark.
“Really, when you’re 11 v 10, you should be able to spread it about a bit, especially so early on in the game.
“The idea is to get the ball down, get it passed about, make the opposing team chase the ball, tire them out and create spaces, where you should always have the spare man available.
“We didn’t do enough of that, we didn’t take control of the ball as well as we should have been doing, and allowed Shotts too much play in the game.”
Harvey now turns his attention to the visit to Tayport in the Scottish Junior Cup third round, and he said: “We expect a really hard game, but I’m not going to worry about them, we’ll set up the way we normally do, and play our game.
“But I am looking for a reaction, and the players are angry at themselves.”
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