Ross County manager Malky Mackay refused to lay the blame solely at skipper Jack Baldwin’s door following his red card in the 2-1 defeat to St Johnstone.
Defender Baldwin was dismissed on the hour mark for a last-man challenge on Stevie May on the edge of the Staggies box.
It came at a time when County led 1-0 thanks to Jordan White’s first half goal, however Ali Crawford went on to secure all three points for the Perth outfit with a late quickfire double.
Although Baldwin was punished by referee Graham Grainger, Mackay felt others were culpable in an untidy succession of play which led to the incident.
Mackay said: “The blame is not just on Jack – not at all.
“When I look at the build up to the sending off, there are five players in our team that could have done something different, which would not have ended up with Stevie May taking it off Jack.
“That being the case, we really caused ourselves our own problems.
“I look at any goal we concede. We scored first again, that’s five in a row we have been the first scorers in a game.
“It’s one of those ones where we look at every goal we concede and see where that started and came from.
“It might start from someone not shutting someone down right up at the top of the park. We had good possession of the ball in midfield, and should have been shifting it to the other side of the park, but didn’t.
“We made bad decisions and were compounded by players that had a part to play in the sending off.”
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The result means County remain 10th in the Premiership table, above Kilmarnock on goal difference.
Mackay was frustrated his side were unable to build on a promising start to the match, in their first match since returning from the World Cup break.
He added: “I thought we started really well. In the first half I was delighted with the way we were playing, we scored a good goal and then we should really have scored the second one.
“Kazeem was right through, and if he had scored it would have taken it to 2-0 going in at half-time. There would have been a different dynamic to it.
“We started the game fine in the second half, but we shot ourselves in the foot.
“After that I think we defended resiliently. We were going to have to, being 1-0 up with 10 men as they threw caution to the wind.
“We were blocking things, and were really resilient up to that point.
“With 15 minutes to go, they got the break of the ball in the box and they fell to Ali Crawford who scored them well.
“We posed our own problems with the sending off, and that changed the course of the game.”
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