John Rankin is furious with the way his Hamilton Accies side keep conceding ‘sloppy’ goals after they lost out in a five-goal thriller at Dunfermline.
Accies fell to a third straight defeat in the Championship as Sean McGinty’s header and a stoppage-time penalty from Oli Shaw weren’t enough to take something from their trip to East End Park.
Rankin’s side are now one of four teams sitting joint second-bottom of the table, with the Pars, Accies, Raith Rovers and Morton all tied on 15 points, 10 clear of bottom side Airdrieonians.
And while the gaffer is pleased to see his side regularly finding the back of the net, he knows their defending is leaving a lot to be desired and is their Achilles heel as they try to steer clear of danger.
He said: “It seems just now that we are scoring goals, we are a threat in forward areas, but the goals we are conceding are really poor.
“It doesn’t matter how well you are attacking and how many goals you are scoring, if you concede the goals that we are conceding right now, it is always going to be a difficult afternoon.
“Our structure when we don’t have the ball is pretty good. It’s when we have the ball and our structure in transition that is causing us problems. That’s why we are giving away free-kicks and corners, and that has to be better.
“It was a good away performance for 50-60 minutes, but we conceded some really sloppy goals. I don’t think there was a lot in the game. Both teams were trying to win it. I think we deserved something from the game.”
Rankin added: “We are extremely disappointed with the result. We did well in the first half and I thought we created two really good chances.
“In the second half we come back out at 0-0 but we give away a free-kick in a wide area, we don’t defend it well enough and it goes straight in.
“We get ourselves back in the game, Gints gets the goal, and at that stage we think we are in the ascendancy and looking for the second goal. But from a free-kick on the halfway line, we ended up conceding a goal on the counter attack.
“The third goal comes from a corner into the box and it’s straight in. That is disappointing that it was able to go straight in and we weren’t aggressive enough in the box to go and clear the ball.
“We get ourselves back in it with the penalty but it wasn’t to be.”
Accies must now lift themselves for the visit of Queen’s Park on Saturday.The Spiders are fifth after sinking Airdrie at the weekend and Rankin said: “We’ll see where we went wrong and see where we can adjust.
“It’s a big game at home to Queen’s Park now. One thing for sure is we will score goals, but we need to cut out those individual errors.”There’s a lack of concentration but there’s certainly not a lack of effort. We’ll be ready for it and make sure we work hard.”
Kick-off at New Douglas Park on Saturday is 3pm.