That was a really poor display, and we were lucky to get it to penalties in the end. Brechin are going well in the Highland League, so they are used to winning, and, I thought they had a far better passing game than ours. I don't think we take this tournament seriously enough, there's no point in going into a competition if you don't want to win it, so we should have started with a much stronger team, and once we had a foothold in the game, introduce the youth players. Some of the subs and formations that ict ended up playing was mind boggling. Does Dodds have something against young Hyde? He gave him and Harper too much responsibility at CM, and then stuck him back in his nightmare position at right back! And we seem to be back to our ponderous best again, passing in back and fore across the back four, going nowhere, allowing Brechin to regroup, while they were hitting us fast on the counter attack. We really need to be more direct, our default position, when we receive the ball, seems to be to turn back and pass back, instead of turning and running at them.
I have said for a few seasons now that we have an acceptable first eleven, but after that, we are pretty ordinary, so we aren't good enough to make the wholesale changes that we made today. I really believe in keeping a winning team going, and with our away trip to Ayr next week, we should have used this game to boost our confidence and form, but I fear it achieved neither of those things.