Raith Rovers slip to seventh place in football’s William Hill Championship after biggest loss since March

Not only is that their biggest defeat since one by 4-0 hosting Queen’s Park in March and their heaviest loss to Airdrie since one by the same scoreline back in 2010 but it also extends their current winless streak in Scottish football’s William Hill Championship to three games.

Their visitors have a caretaker manager in charge too following their sacking of former Raith hero Danny Lennon last month, but Aaron Taylor-Sinclair is enjoying a happier honeymoon period in that role than Hanlon having notched up their first two wins of the season and a draw in his four games in charge.

The seven points yielded by those results leave the North Lanarkshire side at the foot of the table, but with 11 points from 15 fixtures, they’re now only one point adrift of second-from-bottom Ross County and just seven behind Raith, still on the lookout for a permanent manager to replace Barry Robson after he was given the boot four days ahead of Airdrie’s visit.

Rovers have slipped one place in the table to seventh, two points shy of the championship’s promotion play-off places.

Next up for the Fifers is a trip to third-placed Arbroath this coming Saturday, with kick-off at Gayfield Park at 3pm and a move into the top half of the table potentially up for grabs.

Airdrie’s goals past their former keeper Josh Rae in front of a crowd of 3,331 at Stark’s Park were scored by Gavin Gallagher on 38 minutes, Euan Henderson on 53 and Chris Mochrie on 63.

Those goals were among eight shots on target, four times as many as the hosts, deployed in a four-three-three formation, could muster to test visiting keeper Cade Melrose despite winning 13 corners to Airdrie’s three and enjoying 52% possession.

Hanlon, 35, was unhappy not to have got off to a winning beginning in interim charge, extending a winless run for Raith versus Airdrie to four fixtures, telling Raith TV: “I’m obviously bitterly disappointed with the way it panned out.

“I just think we weren’t ruthless enough over the course of the 90 minutes at both ends.

“We need to be better at both ends of the pitch and we weren’t, there’s no doubt about it.

“There were bits that worked. We started both halves pretty well – that’s the disappointing thing.”

Injury and illness forced Hanlon to field a depleted match-day squad at the weekend, with only five outfield players on the home bench to their visitors’ eight, four of them used, but that was no defence for the display put on by the hosts, according to the former Hibernian centre-back, and he’s expecting a better showing seven days on in Angus.

“I don’t want to make any excuses,” he said. “In my first four days in the job, there’ve been a few challenges but we’ve got no excuses.

“The boys on the pitch were more than ready to go and I think we could have done a whole lot better.

“Hopefully it’ll be better next week and I’m sure it will.”