East Kilbride Thistle boss blasts his side after Giffnock defeat

Aaron Connolly admits Saturday’s defeat at home to Giffnock was as poor as his East Kilbride Thistle side have played this season.

The Jags had a proud unbeaten home record until last week’s defeat to West of Scotland Fourth Division leaders St Peter’s, and Giffnock made it back-to-back losses at the Showpark with a comfortable 3-0 win.

Thistle - who have lost three games from 10 outings in the league so far – are now down to seventh in the standings after Giffnock leapfrogged them in the table.

And Connolly sighed: “That is as disappointed as I’ve been with our performance in a long time.

“We were really poor in the game, particularly in the first half, where we never got started.

“We probably should have conceded two minutes in. They have a chance where the ball looked over the line, in all honesty, but we got off the hook with that.

“That set the tone for the rest of the half.

“We were really sloppy in possession and Giffnock really punished us. They were good value for their 2-0 lead at half-time.

“At the break, we made some changes and recovered slightly but we never really looked like we would salvage anything. We were undone at the end when we were chasing it.

“There will also be games when you come up against a team who are better than you on the day and that is probably the first time I’ve really felt like that this season.

“Giffnock were just better than us on the day and we didn’t cope with that.

“Too many of our players had an off day, but we’ll try not to dwell on that.”

Thistle will hope to shake off the effects of that stinging defeat when they make a long trip north to face Aberdeen East End in the second round of the Scottish Junior Cup this Saturday.

They travel to New Advocates Park looking to pull off