St Mirren came back from a goal down against Dumbarton this afternoon to earn a share of the points in a 1-1 draw at The Cheaper Insurance Direct Stadium. Alex Rae gave his thoughts post-match. He said:
“We passed up numerous chances today which was the most frustrating thing for us, but on a pleasing point of view we actually created three of four very good chances in the first half and obviously we had a couple in the second half that were gilt-edged. So we’re disappointed from that point of view but it was a spirited performance by the boys.
“We need to look for all the positives. The one thing for me is that we actually created very good chances today, unfortunately we just didn’t have the composure to bury them and get that win that we are desperate for.”
Saints are now six games into the league season without a win and the manager is aware of the importance of getting it on the board as soon as possible. He said:
“The longer it goes on the more difficult it becomes and people get frustrated but we’re all in this together. If we are divided we won’t conquer anything so it’s a case of everyone sticking together and trying to get over this difficult period.
“We obviously want to try and get that win to try and kick up the table and progress but we just need to keep going and be positive and that is what we will do.”
Under-20 player Darren Whyte made his first team debut coming on as a substitute late in the second half and Calum Gallagher made his return from injury as a substitute. The manager said:
“Darren is a committed character and we wanted to pick up some more second balls in the middle of the park and try and keep Dumbarton on the back foot, and he managed to do that.
“The thing is with Calum he has only trained four or five days since he has been out from the Raith Rovers game so he has not really played a lot of minutes but we just had to try and change it up a little bit and try and get a bit of impetus going forward. It was difficult for him because he obviously hasn’t had a lot of games.”
A few eyebrows were raised yesterday when it was confirmed that Ben Gordon has gone to Alloa Athletic on an emergency loan. Alex explains his reasons for letting the central defender go out on loan to the League One side. He said:
“We need to free up some funds to try and mix things up. There have been one or two people bemused by it but we have actually got more centre-halfs so it was easy to make that up and we may well look at maybe letting someone else go out on loan as we have spent our budget so need to maybe try and be creative exactly like we did last January when we let [Mark] Ridgers go. So when we do that it is just about mixing up and trying to free up some money.
“We’ve been monitoring a boy for the last three or four weeks and unfortunately he got injured last week so we’ll obviously keep our eye on that but then it gives us an opportunity to maybe bring another player in.”
