Queen of the South boss Peter Murphy was brutally honest after their away day defeat at Cove and admitted: “It was not good enough.”
He tore into his team who have now failed to win a League One game on the road or even score a goal.
Murphy said: “We need to work the keeper a lot more and be tougher to play against. We need to put teams under more pressure, ask more questions and be a bit more ruthless.”
However, Murphy insisted there was no need to press the panic button and pointed out that Queens had created chances but needed to be more clinical in front of goal.
He added that they needed “to ask more questions” of opposing teams and said: “Everybody in this division is fighting for everything.
“So we have to make sure that we are fighting in their box, in their half, putting balls into the box and make teams defend.
“When teams are under pressure and they’re defending a little bit more than what they probably want to, people make mistakes and that’s when you get the opportunity.
“So, we need to make sure we’re asking the right questions.”
He waved away claims of any anxiety over the away form and stressed: “It’s not a concern, it’s just when you have those periods of pressure you need to score because the opposition will get a moment, so we need to make sure that we ask enough questions to score goals.
“I don’t think we did that today. I’d say that the keeper had probably three saves to make, which is not enough.
“We have territorial advantage, where we’re in their half and keeping the ball and moving it from side to side, but we didn’t put enough balls in the box, we didn’t get enough players into the box, so that’s the concern.
“And we need to make sure we do that a little bit more often.
“We did it in the Dumbarton game and we ended up coming out with a result.”
Despite the Doonhamers’ defeat, Murphy was adamant the scoreline masked the game saying it was not a true reflection of play: “Absolutely not but that is football.
“You can dominate a game and not score a goal and there’s one counter attacking the opposition team score. We’re playing well, keeping the ball, and moving it around and (we) dominated play, but we’re just not getting the goals, so that’s what we need to work on.
“It’s a really tough one to take, especially that the second goal is a really glaring mistake from us.
“We came out the second half after saying that we need to put Cove under more pressure and we played the majority of the half in their half, putting balls into the opposition’s box, but I thought they were very good and defended really well.”