Berwick Rangers boss Thomas Scobbie calling on players to up their game after cup KO by opposition four leagues lower

Rangers lost 3-0 at home at Shielfield Park to West of Scotland Football League third division outfit Threave Rovers at the weekend and that’s just not good enough, according to Scobbie.

​The ninth-tier Castle Douglas team scored all of their goals against their Scottish Lowland Football League hosts within just over a quarter of an hour and then kept hold of that lead for the remainder of their third-round tie to make it into round four of the cup.

Tam Coles got two of their goals, on 21 minutes and 38, and Harry Officer put away the other, on 24, and that was enough to secure progress as fifth-tier Rangers were unable to find a way past visiting goalkeeper Sam Henderson.

Scobbie has hit out at what he slammed as a poor performance from his team and is calling for a reaction away to Gretna 2008 in the league this coming Saturday, following a midweek fixture tonight, October 16, hosting Heart of Midlothian B, with kick-off at 7.45pm.

“It’s individual errors that are killing us and people not taking responsibility for doing their jobs, first and foremost,” said the 36-year-old afterwards.

“Today wasn’t about nice, neat play football – it was about doing the dirty side really well, and we didn’t do that.

“In the first half, we conceded silly goals that we shouldn’t be conceding.

“It was a really, really poor performance and one that we take responsibility for because I’m an honest kind of guy and the buck stops with me.

“We need to get better. The guys need to start putting in a performance and following the instructions that we’re giving them.

“I want to see them care about performing for this club.

“We brought them in because we felt they were the right characters to come into the club. Unfortunately, some of the guys don’t seem to be hitting those heights at the moment and that’s tough to see because we’re all fighting for the club and working as hard as we can, and when we see performances like we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks it’s been really disappointing.”

Saturday’s cup exit was Rangers’ third home defeat on the spin following league losses by 7-1 to East Kilbride seven days prior and 1-0 to Bo’ness United the Tuesday before that, and Scobbie is now considering a recruitment drive to turn around his team’s fortunes.

“We’re a club that want to keep moving forward and we’ll look to see if there’s anyone out there to come and strengthen us,” he said.

“If there are players available, then we’ll go and get them because I want to be successful, the coaches want to be successful and some of the boys want to be successful.”

“We need to analyse it and see where we can strengthen and find players who are going to come in and help the team.”

Kick-off at Raydale Park on Saturday is at 3pm.