“The team who won the game deserved to win the game. They had the right approach at the start. In that first forty-five minutes I did not recognise my team to be honest. I thought we were second best all over the pitch. I thought Ryan Christie lit the game up with his ability. We never got to grips with him. He was excellent for them as were Inverness in that first half.

“Whilst we dominated the second half and played the game properly I still feel the team that won the game deserved to win the game.

“In that first half we lost poor goals and then score with our first decent set-play. Niall puts it in a quality ball.

“That masked a lot of what happened in the first half.

“It was probably, as my time as manager here over the past two and a half years, as poor a performance that I have seen since I have been in charge.

“I did not see it coming. Normally you envisage our players, no matter how good or bad they are, they are on it, working hard and winning tackles to try and make the game go our way and trying to get that momentum in our play.

“We were up against a good team and we allowed their better players to be too influential. From that point of view I was disappointed. It is something we must recognise. We must stop the opposition from playing first and foremost before we can start playing our game.

“I could stand here and say it was close and we deserved more, we could say that and there might be some merit in saying that with the pressure we had in the second half. If the game goes on longer we probably get an equaliser but for me that does hide the fact Inverness deserved the three points.

“There is never a lack of effort but there has to be a desire to do the ugly side of the game first and foremost.

“Again for the second game running we had influential players having to come off. Losing Niall was a blow. But the same team that beat Celtic a fortnight ago was out there apart from one player.

“We cannot play games in the manner we did in the first half and expect to win. It is not easy to criticise the team because they had been fantastic so far. But today for the first time, we did not have the enthusiasm and the desire to stop the opposition and that is why we went in at half time behind and had to chase the game.

“Niall has tweaked his groin. I don’t know how he is at the moment.”

“Niall has tweaked his groin. I don’t know how he is at the moment.”