McCoist: to be honest it's not a shock

Ally McCoist has admitted that his side’s 1-0 defeat at Stirling Albion was no shock.

An eighth minute goal from Brian Allison gave the home side all three points against opponents fielding full internationalists in Lee McCulloch, Lee Wallace, Neil Alexander, Ian Black, Dean Shiels and Kevin Kyle.

At the start of the season Sevco were 33/1 on favourites to win the Third Division title but were turned over by a team that had lost five league games in a row.

“To be honest with you it’s not a real shock,” McCoist said. “Our away performances would indicate that.

“I felt we made enough chances to win a couple of games but didn’t take them and got punished.

“We have to congratulate our opponents but at the same time look at our own performance. The tempo of the game wasn’t quick enough as I keep saying to the boys. We certainly had good chances to score but they took their chance and that’s why we got punished.

“I’m at a loss to explain the away results, I would eradicate the problem if it was clearly evident, I don’t think you need to be a top football coach to know that we are not the same team away from home. Having said that it’s a problem that we are dealing with on the training ground and working hard.

“The lads as you’d expect are extremely disappointed, it’s new to them, the only people who can do anything about it are themselves. We’ll watch the game again, we’ll look and see if we can get the reasons for the disparity between the performances home and away.”

Asked whether he was feeling the pressure McCoist claimed: “I’m not under any more than I would in any game, I just feel frustrated. That’s my over riding feeling, frustration at not getting away results, away victories in the division.

“At the same time there’s a determination to put it right. I would say that at the start of the season that there was a lot of comments made from people outwith the club about how we’d go through the division but I always knew that it would be a lot harder than was being made out.

“It’s certainly coming out that way but at the same time we’re in a league that we should be winning and at this moment in time our away performances are posing us a big problem but we will work hard to strive to turn the corner and we will. I’ll make sure we will.”

CLICK HERE for McCoist’s SFA u-turn

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