Very disappointing not to win that, especially having done all the hard work to gain the lead.  If Keatings is the recognised penalty taker, why on earth did he not insist on taking it?  

Two moments of brilliance to be happy for, and lots of frustration.  Final touch/cross was often really poor.  To be fair, Alloa looked quite well organised at the back.  How many corners did they defend well? At least a dozen I would guess.

We'll have to be a lot more clinical to get anything from Hearts on Friday.

You have to score a penalty if you are grabbing the ball from two other players to take it... minimum expected is a good attempt. That cost us the three points. 

Is Keatings not our usual penalty taker? Storey is usually a terrible striker of the ball, why on earth did he take it. Storey is a disgrace if he has gone against team orders and demanded to take it when hes not the designated taker. 

Thought we'd rescued 3 points from another poor performance until we hit self destruct yet again.  I couldn't believe how nervous we looked with the ball at times.

After Alloa went ahead we huffed and puffed without creating much of note. The away side were happy to defend what they had and to be honest we didn't look like we were ever going to break them down - even our dozen or so 2nd half corners were easily enough defended.  Storey going wide left seemed to completely change the game though and once we scored it felt like 3 or 4 were coming.

I just want to finish with a note on Storey's penalty.  It looked like Todorov was the designated taker hence why Keatings and possibly also Shane got involved. Really selfish action from him and it's cost us the game- it also seemed to affect Storey as well as he spent the last few minutes trying to shoot from everywhere when he got the ball. Really poor attitude and tonight of all nights the team had to come first after what they've all been through. I really hope the senior players had a word with him.

Think Storey's woeful penalty sums us up. 

No leadership or direction .

ffs who decided he is the penalty taker anyway. Looked like school playground, players grabbing and holding onto the ball.

We score good goals and lose sloppy ones...

We have struggled against Alloa in the last two seasons, but that game was there for the taking.

To be honest, I’d have taken a point with 20 minutes to play, but after turning it round with two quick, good goals (particularly Duffy’s) we should have gone on and won comfortably.

We have drawn or lost too many games this season that we should have won, and we should be comfortably in a play off place.

We had three moments that stopped us winning.

First the woeful pass from Devine which led to the first goal. We should have cleared it much sooner and, when he did, we should at the very least have got it much further up the pitch.

Second the poor penalty by Storey. I don’t know who was nominated to take penalties in the absence of Welsh, but I’d have gone with Keatings. It needed power so it would need a great save. He made it easy for the goalie.

Third the lazy tackle by Harper. I don’t hold it against him as he has done well this season and will make mistakes at his age, and we should have been 3-1 up by then so it would not have mattered.

I’d also like to see the disallowed MacGregor goal again to see why it was chalked off.

Somehow we are 6th but we should be 5th and we have two hard games coming up against Hearts and Dundee.

I accept that the players will be affected by the issues with Robbo and Kells so will cut them some slack, but that does feel like a defeat rather than a draw.

To end on a positive, the livestream was much better with two doing the commentary. Iain is knowledgeable and I thought brought balance to it, with less stats as a result. 

Ditto what you guys said above. Does not auger well for the Hearts game.

At least the second half commentary was a lot better. Just need to change the camera position to the west side and introduce replays and close ups. We'll have that on Friday though.

If we score the penalty and go 3-1 up then there is no way back for Alloa.  The way we were playing at the time, we might well have grabbed another and then gone into the Hearts game full of confidence.  As it is a missed penalty and dissent in the ranks gives Alloa a huge boost and we lost the confidence and momentum we had achieved.

Every team has a designated penalty taker and all players are well aware of who it is.  It is completely unacceptable that someone who is not that person should try to take a penalty, and one assumes from what we witnessed that Storey was not the designated taker.  If that is the case, then Storey deserves some internal punishment for so badly letting down so many people.  Having said that, I can maybe understand someone grabbing the ball in the heat of the moment, but what I can't understand is the rest of the team letting him do it.

A win would have put us 1 point below the promotion play off places.  As it is, we are just one point above the relegation play off place.  These things matter.

ian auld much better commentator. throwing away opportunities.

Here's the CTO report. Will add match reaction and footage when available.

Storey's penalty was deja vu for me. Just like one he took for Partick a while back and Ridgers saved it. Plus like duffer Vi**rs took against Sevco in 16-17 season. 

Feels like a loss, but if we had lost we'd be in a far worse place going into the hearts game.

Keeping in mind we are struggling to score we must sort out our defending.

The equaliser was the result of not picking up runners between our lines...Alloa had so much space by the time they got to our box that a simple pass exposed Harper 1 on 1...you know the rest.

Undone by two cheap goals.

1 hour ago, DoofersDad said:

Every team has a designated penalty taker and all players are well aware of who it is.  It is completely unacceptable that someone who is not that person should try to take a penalty, and one assumes from what we witnessed that Storey was not the designated taker.  If that is the case, then Storey deserves some internal punishment for so badly letting down so many people.  Having said that, I can maybe understand someone grabbing the ball in the heat of the moment, but what I can't understand is the rest of the team letting him do it.

 

Lack of leadership on the pitch, unfortunately.
 

It’s not just about captaincy, there was a time when you could have said we had leaders all over the pitch. 

Was going to make a joke about Montrose away days next season but I remembered we're mid table...

2 hours ago, Jockdoonsouth said:

Our defence well ...

Storey well ...

Toddy well ...

We need a firm, and organised, Captain bossing things. The boys lacked leadership. Carson worked hard again tonight. Great impact by Keatings. 

I am happy with Mark as Captain but a goalie is too far away from the action in a dispute over who is taking the penalty.   The decision must be in the dressing room before the game, with a second choice if the player is not on the field and a third choice after that.  Tonights schoolboy squabbling cost ICT 2 points tonight and must be sorted.   (Or maybe Mark needs to shout and be as forceful as Kasper is as captain of Leicester) 

Gosh ..what a topsy-turvey game, following it via the BBC website I had us down for an irritating defeat with 15mins to go, was over the moon with 10mins to go, went 'oh-no' to see we missed a penalty, and had my head in my hads with that late equaliser from Alloa....so it felt a bit like a defeat.  Not sure what went on over the penalty miss, but if you grab the ball you need to make sure you don't give the keeper a sniff of a chance by blasting it. We have had problems with penalties recently.

Still, on the good news front, it has to be so that we came back with two goals from behind, and sounds like it should have been more, and it probably helps that the club have got Neil McCann in to manage the team on the interim, we may get the 'new manager' bounce.

Friday will be tough, how did Hearts get 20points ahead of us? but I am hopeful

10 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

If we score the penalty and go 3-1 up then there is no way back for Alloa.  The way we were playing at the time, we might well have grabbed another and then gone into the Hearts game full of confidence.  As it is a missed penalty and dissent in the ranks gives Alloa a huge boost and we lost the confidence and momentum we had achieved.

Every team has a designated penalty taker and all players are well aware of who it is.  It is completely unacceptable that someone who is not that person should try to take a penalty, and one assumes from what we witnessed that Storey was not the designated taker.  If that is the case, then Storey deserves some internal punishment for so badly letting down so many people.  Having said that, I can maybe understand someone grabbing the ball in the heat of the moment, but what I can't understand is the rest of the team letting him do it.

A win would have put us 1 point below the promotion play off places.  As it is, we are just one point above the relegation play off place.  These things matter.

Lack of Captaincy. We need one person to be permanent Captain. Carlo wouldn't have taken that from Storey. Hope Storey has a game on the bench and starts to learn valuable lessons. He has moments of magic tempered by long periods of greed. He'll of just about matured by the time he reaches retirement age. Now Carson is back give him the Captaincy. He leads by example.

23 minutes ago, Jockdoonsouth said:

Lack of Captaincy. We need one person to be permanent Captain. Carlo wouldn't have taken that from Storey. Hope Storey has a game on the bench and starts to learn valuable lessons. He has moments of magic tempered by long periods of greed. He'll of just about matured by the time he reaches retirement age. Now Carson is back give him the Captaincy. He leads by example.

From what Dundee fans say about McCann I dont think there's any way he will allow anything like that to happen. 

Difficult to know what to do.

I agree that there's no leadership on the pitch.  I said a couple of weeks ago that we look like eleven separate players on the field, each doing their own thing.

Overall, I don't think there was much difference between the performance at Ayr and the one last night.  The main difference was that, at Ayr, Ridgers kept us in the game a few times, whereas last night we gifted Alloa two goals (Ridgers in no way to blame) and missed a penalty.

There is simply no telling how a game is going to go.   So although Friday looks like a tough game, and form says that Hearts should win, in reality anything could happen.  Bring it on!

Full highlights.

I doubt that Storey was offside when he headed home.....Meh, sucks a bit to be honest.

36 minutes ago, tm4tj said:

Full highlights.

I doubt that Storey was offside when he headed home.....Meh, sucks a bit to be honest.

 

Looked very tight. If it was the EPL maybe VAR would have found one of his bootlaces had strayed offside.

I agree. One of the defenders looked in line.

Storey has been rightly slaughtered for the penalty debacle but he and Keatings both made a difference to our performance after coming on, and the cross and finish they combined to give us the second goal was sublime. Credit to Duffy also for his goal, another great finish.

I'm not sure I think Storey was ever so slightly offside. Glad no one has said something like "you've got to give the benefit to the attacker" as there is no rule that says you do. You win some, you lose some and sadly we lost that decision.

All the positivity from the Ayr game seems to have evaporated after last nights draw. It feels like we should have won that but at the same time I feel that had we bagged three points we wouldn't really have been deserving of them. There was a strange moment when the commentator on ICT TV said (paraphrasing) that we deserved to be level if not ahead because of the amount of possession we had and the (half) chances we created but when we did go ahead started talking about a smash and grab win which I thought was a bit odd.

Really sloppy from Devine attempting to play that ball out of defence but also good anticipation from Scougall to cut out the low, driven pass and a nice through ball for Cameron. Not sure why MacGregor had his "goal" chalked off at the time but looking at the highlights you can see Sutherland held back an Alloa player to stop him getting to the ball. Cracking hit from Duffy for our equaliser. Smashing shot. Watching our second back it wasn't quite as good as I thought last night, bit of a scuffed cross from Storey and Keatings hits it into the ground but I would have bitten your hand off for that goal if it had secured us three points so I am not going to complain about it.

Sadly we weren't able to see it out. Harsh but correct penalty award for handball gave us the chance for a third from nowhere but Storey had clearly been watching Iain Vigurs and some of his spot kicks. Really weak and far too close to the keeper. Then Alloa got a penalty of their own and Trouten wasn't going to miss.

We really struggled to break Alloa down. For a period towards the end of the first half it seemed they were playing with a solid back 5 and at least 3 players sitting right in front of that back line making it nigh on impossible for us to get through. We just chucked high balls out towards to side of the pitch as we didn't have the craft to pass our way through them. When they went 2 - 1 down they came right back at us and after they drew level I think Grant realised that they could easily win it so instead of sitting back again they kept pushing for a winner. I wonder if they had been more positive after their first whether they could actually have been out of sight before we did get back into it.

Commentary was much better with two people there and Iain Auld is a solid addition. Andy Bannerman, if he could tone down the endless Wiki recital (we don't need to know every players youth team), would probably be fine as well.