Furious Ally McCoist has slammed his side’s dodgy defending after the 3-1 defeat from Californian aces Ventura County Fusion.
Bilel Mohsni, Darren McGregor and Lee McCulloch had a torrid time against the Fusion forward line as Sevco opened up their North American tour with a humiliating defeat in front of 7,000 fans.
Fusion, formed from a pub side just five years ago, were a step ahead of the League One winners with McCoist not missing any targets as he looked back on the defeat. “Defensively, particularly in the second half, we were really poor and that concerned me,” the £800,000-a-year manager told the club website.
“It made me unhappy more than anything. We did have chances in the second half and some very, very good ones which, on another day, we could and should have scored.
“That’s always going to happen. Sometimes you’re going to take your chances and sometimes you’re not but what disappointed me most of all tonight was the level of defending, especially after the break.”
New signing Kenny Miller failed to shine in the match being replaced by Nicholas Clark in the 65th minute with Kris Boyd unable to make an impact as a half-time substitute.
Despite playing regularly on astroturf over the last two years McCoist decided to highlight the surface as Fusion although in trademark fashion he then refused to blame the turf for his side’s embarrassing defeat.
“Unless I wasn’t watching it correctly, it was the same surface for both teams,” the Govan Guardiola observed astutely.
“Was it ideal? No, but they had to play on it as well. They did that better than we did and that’s the one thing we have to be honest about. “We’ve had a lot of training sessions after a long trip here but the level of performance in the second half wasn’t good enough.
“I expected better from that team, even with the training they have done. We’ve worked on a few things and we’ve trained the lads hard enough. “At the same time, we’ve left enough in their legs to play the game. There was slackness about us which I haven’t seen in a long, long time.
“The boys were taking time on the ball when usually they’d be passing it about to each other. We will have to eliminate that slackness.”