“It was another frustrating afternoon for us. The fact that we can’t score goals has been there for a while and with every game, that becomes more and more worrying.

“We’ve been striving to rectify that and I thought today, in terms of our build up play getting into the final third, a lot of it was good. But while that play maybe deserves goals, you have to score them and we’re not doing that.

“The boys feel it in the dressing room, they’ve worked hard in the ten days that I’ve had with them, and nobody feels the disappointment more than them.

“They did what we asked them to do in terms of building things up, playing out from the back, even into the last 30 seconds Joe is playing a wee pass and we get up the pitch that way.

“We wanted them to be a bit braver in their play and they did that, we passed it well. But once you get in the box, it’s that killer instinct that we need.

“They stuck to what we wanted, they kept plugging away but it’s been the same message the last six or eight weeks. The longer it goes without goals, the more anxious the players get.

“We feel aggrieved we didn’t get a penalty when Lewis Ferguson went down in the first half, there’s no getting away from it. It’s hard for referees, the get one look at it and have to make a decision but I felt he could have spoken to the linesman. For me, it’s a penalty. You get that decision and score the goal, that lifts the shackles a wee bit, but there’s more to us losing the game than not getting a penalty.

“I felt Jack MacKenzie coped with the game really well on his debut, he stood up to things and he can be pleased with his work. He didn’t look at all out of place.

“I brought another youngster Calvin Ramsey into the squad because I felt he might get an opportunity today, albeit that I would have liked him to get longer in an ideal world, but that wasn’t to be.

“That is why Shay was not in the squad. It was a decision I made and then Shay and I had a conversation and it was quite amicable. He has not been playing as regularly as he would have liked and we have a young player there is Calvin who we think very highly of. I did not want to drag Shay down here if he was not going to play.

“We’ve got a couple of weeks now before the next game, we’ve got four boys away on international duty, but we’ll keep working away to put things right for when the games come around again at the start of next month.

“I am in touch with the Chairman and he has said the process is ongoing. I am not sure how long that process will take but he has told me that if there is any change within the process then we as staff will be the first to know. We will just keep going until we are told differently.”