St Andrews United's Robbie Raeside brands club social media write up 'an absolute disgrace' after King Cup final defeat

Trailing 2-0 at half-time in torrential rain at Kelty Hearts’ New Central Park to strikes by Barney Stewart and Nandom Domyil, United pulled one back through Ryan McManus’s 72nd-minute free-kick but then conceded two further goals to the students’ Connor Preston.

"It’s disappointing to finish the season like that,” Raeside told the Herald and Citizen. “We probably didn’t deserve to win the cup on the day as Heriot-Watt gave a better performance than us, but it wasn’t a 4-1 game.

"It became a 4-1 game because we never took our chances and gave them soft goals. At half-time we didn’t deserve to be behind yet we were 2-0 behind.

“I’m not saying we played great football but we still gave them two soft goals and missed a host of chances.

"The fact that we have lost our last game of the season and we have a couple of months to stew on it probably does make it a tougher one for us. But looking back on the season after a few days, would we have taken how we did overall? Too right.

"Six points above Whitburn, well ahead of Newtongrange Star and 22 points ahead of Heriot-Watt.”

Raeside said he was irked by a match report on a Saints supporters social media page which had branded United’s display “one of their worst performances in years” and said that “several players were out of position as Raeside experimented with tactics”.

The gaffer, who got Saints promoted to the East of Scotland Premier Division this season after finishing second in the first division, added: “That write up was an absolute disgrace against me, my assistant Garry Wright and the players. We put the same line-up out with the same formation that won the semi-final on the Tuesday (a 2-0 home success over Leith Athletic).

"Since we lost three games in January, we played the same formation that has won us all these games since then and got us promoted. That final was our eighth game in 24 days. I had one first team sub and a bench of under-20s.

"I would hate to see the supporters’ Facebook page if we were actually sitting with a struggling team."

Raeside also felt it was a definite advantage for Heriot-Watt to be playing on a familiar 3G surface, with the students playing home league games on a 3G synthetic pitch within the John Brydson Arena on the university campus at Riccarton.

He said: “It’s no surprise that we started slowly on an astroturf surface that they’re used to.

"We didn’t start great, we lost a soft goal and they deserved to be 1-0 up.

"But as soon as they scored, we were the better team for the next 20 minutes but we just couldn’t score.

"Then a ridiculous individual error, a mix-up between my goalkeeper and my centre-half, cost us a goal.

"They’ve both been outstanding all season and we’ve lost one goal like that.

"At half-time we go in and the players were stunned because it was just ridiculous that it was 2-0 at that point.

"But goals change games and they gave them something to hold onto.

"At the start of the second half we missed a couple of sitters and they weren’t half chances.

"I think at some point somebody hit a shot and it hit our own player on the line.

"We missed some sitter chances in that game, despite not playing the fluent football that maybe Heriot-Watt played.

"We had a clear header, an open goal in the centre of the six-yard box, headed wide. We probably had four or five chances in the six-yard box that we just never took.

"But Ryan McManus then scores a brilliant free-kick to get us back in the game and we’re throwing the kitchen sink at them.

"Then we got hit by a couple of counter attacks.

"The third goal is the one goal I would say that they worked well.

"For the fourth goal we had only two at the back at the time.”

Raeside assessed the challenges his team will face in a higher division next season.

He said: “I think we’ve got the nucleus of a really good squad but I think we need to add to compete. There are only two players out of contract just now – Scott Reekie and Ryan Dignan – and I know that the chairman’s been speaking to them. Everybody else is under contract.”