Berwick Rangers manager Kevin Haynes tells of anger at wasted chances away to Broxburn Athletic
Berwick Rangers manager Kevin Haynes has hit out at his team for squandering chances away to Broxburn Athletic on Saturday and failing to stop their hosts making the most of theirs at the other end of the pitch.
Those failures to take advantage when opportunity knocked for them at Albyn Park and to shut up shop when it did likewise for their West Lothian opponents left them on the wrong end of a 2-0 scoreline, their fourth loss of the new Scottish Lowland Football League East season and their third on the bounce versus Broxburn.
Their second-placed hosts’ goals past visiting No 1 Calum Antell were scored by Chris O’Kane on 24 minutes and Ali Shrive on 60 but his opposite number Kyle King was the busier of the two goalkeepers as he kept a clean sheet to help his side secure all three points.
Those differing defensive displays were all that separated the two teams, according to Haynes.
“I thought it was fairly balanced, pretty even,” the 45-year-old told his club’s Facebook page afterwards.
“We created a few decent opportunities and we’ve been punished for not taking them.
“There were two sides to the game – the first one is not taking our chances and the second one is two sloppy goals that we’ve conceded from the second phase at set-pieces.
“I’m angry about that. I can think back to the Hearts B game and I can think back to the Brechin City game when we did the same – we switched off in the second phase.
“We spoke about it at half-time and you think you’ve addressed it and, lo and behold, 15 minutes later, we do it again.
“From that perspective, you probably deserve nothing from the game if you’re going to defend like that, but, on the other side, I think we created enough chances to win the game.
“We’re a good side when we get going and we get motoring and we pass the ball well and we build up play well.
“Probably the last element – slipping someone in was maybe underhit or a cross was overhit – but the Broxburn goalkeeper had three or four saves to make and Antell’s not had any.
“I can’t think of anything Antell had to do apart from pick the ball up at the back of the net, so I feel sorry for him.
“In general, I felt we defended pretty well. We got done by two bits of sloppy defending from set-pieces, but in open play I thought we defended pretty well.”
Saturday’s defeat leaves Rangers joint-11th with Musselburgh Athletic in their 16-team table on four points from six fixtures.
They’re away to West of Scotland Football League division two’s Greenock Juniors this coming Saturday in round two of this season’s South Region Challenge Cup, with kick-off at 2pm, and that will be the two teams’ first meeting.
Next up after that is a KDM Evolution Trophy fixture at home to Hibernian B next Tuesday, with kick-off at Shielfield Park at 7.45pm.