Raith Rovers' Early Red Card Costs Ayr United
Raith Rovers' early red card costs Ayr United against Raith Rovers in a Scottish Championship match. Ayr United boss Gary Naysmith says his side's reaction to their early red card is what cost them against Raith Rovers. The Honest Men fell to their first defeat of the Scottish Championship season on Saturday as the hosts ran out 2-0 winners in Kirkcaldy.
What Happened?
Former Somerset Park striker Anton Dowds came back to haunt his old side as he struck twice within the opening 20 minutes of the fixture. His seven-minute double came in the moments following a red card for Leon King just five minutes into the match. The defender was given his marching orders after the referee determined he pulled down Paul McMullan as he was through on goal and denied an obvious goalscoring opportunity.
Why it Matters for Raith Rovers
The real bit that frustrated me was how we responded to going down to ten men for the 15 or 20 minutes after it. The two goals we conceded, it doesn’t matter if you have 10 men or nine men, we can’t have players unmarked in the middle of our box. We need to defend better than that. The real bit we need to focus on is when we’ve went down to 10 men, until we go 2-0 down, why was it so easy for them to put the ball in the back of our net? From 30 minutes to the end of the game, I don’t think I could have asked anymore from the players.
What Comes Next?
Naysmith says he expected a challenging afternoon after being reduced to 10 men though feels his team could still have posed a sterner test to Raith. He continued: You could play a game 100 times playing with 10 men for 87 minutes and you might only get a result in two or three of them. My frustration is that we never gave ourselves a chance to get a result. We just have to defend our box better, we’ve gifted them two goals. I’m not throwing the players under the bus, we know they’ve gave absolutely everything, especially from 30 minutes to 90 minutes. We also have to work on the things we didn’t do so well. After that, there was a lot of positives.
League Standing
Raith Rovers are currently 2nd in the Championship with 7 points, 2 wins, 1 draw, and 0 losses from 3 games, with a recent form of WWD.
Goals This Season
Raith Rovers have scored 5 goals and conceded 2 this season, with a goal difference of +3.
The Somerset boss will now look to comb over the details from Saturday before looking ahead to next weekend's home league fixture against Greenock Morton. Naysmith added: We want to have a good home record, hopefully we’ll have a good following. We’ll get right onto Morton at the start of the week. First things first, we need to analyse this game. We need to show the players back what we think as a management team we need to do better.
What's Next for Raith Rovers?
Raith Rovers will look to bounce back from their defeat against Greenock Morton next weekend. Ahead of a run of games you can check on our fixtures page to see their upcoming schedule.
