East Fife striker Kevin Smith knows squad has the quality to improve

The Fifers slipped to a sorry 5-0 loss at Dumbarton on Saturday, the home side scoring all their goals from set-pieces.

It was a day to forget, to put it mildly, the loss causing East Fife to drop back to the foot of League One.

The margin of the defeat was a surprise, especially given the Fifers appeared to be back on track thanks to successive wins against Peterhead.

Club skipper Smith conceded it wasn’t good enough and admitted the players were left hurting after the loss.

“It’s a hard one to take, five set-pieces is really disappointing,” he said.

"It’s probably the biggest defeat since I’ve been at the club and all the boys are a bit low.

"It’s not nice and there’s been a few harsh words said in the changing room so we’ll have to move on quickly now, assess it and see how we can improve. There are no excuses and everybody was on a high after the last two results where we’d scored some good goals and defended really well.

"I just didn’t see the Dumbarton result coming at all so it’s back to the drawing board and start to do the basics properly.”

Now, Smith says, it’s all about a positive response and he’s backing his team mates to do just that

"It’s good to hurt a bit because it shows you care,” said the 34-year-old.

“We have the quality and we know what we’re capable of.”