East Fife boss Young blames injuries for side's current state

The Fifers’ gaffer said he was loathe to make excuses, but, not unreasonably, pointed to his horrendous injury list as a factor in seeing his side sit bottom of the League One table.

"I’m sitting there on Saturday morning and I’ve got nine players out through injury or illness.

“I don’t care who you are in this league, if you’ve got nine players out, nearly an entire team, it’s tough.

“It’s a situation I’ve never come across before as a player or manager, but it’s one of those things and we just have to deal with it.”

Young says it was an unhappy combination of poor finishing and sloppy defending in the second 45 that ultimately sealed the Fifers’ fate at Links Park having gone in at half time at 0-0.

“Nothing changed for us regarding personnel and we started the second half the way we started the first.

“We had a great opportunity to take the lead. I think we could have even been 2-0 up at one point, but we didn’t take it and within 10 seconds they’ve gone up the park and scored.

“It was a good strike by the boy Keatings but I think he should have been closed down before he gets his strike away.

“We then lost a poor second. Basically it’s a lack of concentration and the difference between this week and at last was that we took our chances.

“They punished us for it – it’s a simple as that. The goals we are losing are too soft.

“It’s not that we’re not creating chances, it’s that we’re not keeping them out at the other end.

“We need to be more ruthless in both boxes but maybe there’s a wee bit of a lack of confidence from some boys when we lose a goal, but we need to be stronger than that.

“It’s another three points chucked away.”

Young’s side will now look to close the gap at the bottom of the table as they welcome Dumbarton to Bayview this Saturday.

"We aim now to try and catch Clyde who are the closest team to us,” Young says, “the league table looks bad but we’re not out of it by any stretch of the imagination.

“We’ve got the game against Dumbarton and we’re looking forward to that. We may have one or two boys back fit.

“It sounds a silly thing to say but it was five set pieces that killed us when we played them down there – it was never a 5-0 game.

“So this gives us a chance to have a wee reaction to that, and to last weekend.

“The fans will give us a lift like they did against Cove Rangers and hopefully they will give us their backing again.”