Ross County co-manager Steven Ferguson says the Staggies cannot look any further than themselves in their efforts to overturn their recent Premiership slump.
County’ s 2-1 loss to St Mirren on Saturday was an eighth successive match without a victory for the Dingwall men, following a promising start to their campaign after promotion from the Championship.
Although County are seventh in the table, the defeat leaves them just three points above bottom placed St Johnstone among a tight cluster of teams in the lower half of the table.
Ferguson insists the Staggies’ slackness is proving costly in matches, and he said: “Failing to keep the lead until half time was frustrating. St Mirren’s equaliser was a scrappy goal from our point of view that could definitely have been defended better.
“It’s a common theme at the moment where we keep shooting ourselves in the foot by not doing things properly.
“We need to come up quickly with some sort of solution to make sure we manage these games better than we are at the moment.
“It has been a bit of a common theme of late, albeit against top end opposition rather than against St Mirren at the bottom.”
County had taken the lead against Saints through Brian Graham’s first half strike, with goals at the end of each half from Sean McLoughlin and Sam Foley turning the match on its head.
Ferguson was left frustrated by a poor second half performance from the Staggies, and felt the Buddies were deserving of the victory which took them off the foot of the table.
Ferguson added: “There wasn’t any great amount of quality in the game from both teams, but fair play to St Mirren, they came away with the win and on the second half they probably deserved it more than us.
“We feel we didn’t give ourselves a chance because we didn’t retain the ball or show any real quality in possession. That meant we were defending way more than we should have been.
“That’s a problem for us, and a problem we are going to need to address. It’s not a problem we are going to say is not there, it is.
“We are not going to sit here and make excuses. We will look at ourselves, and there are a million things that we can do better. That’s what we will try and do.”