Albion Rovers boss Brian Reid was disappointed to lose 3-2 to Celtic ‘B’ in the SPFL Trust Trophy first round, but says it was a good lesson for his side.
Rovers opened the scoring through Sean Fagan inside two minutes, and doubled their lead in 27 minutes when Amaury Testa’s cross was sliced into his own net by Dylan Corr.
But Bosun Lawal set up Rocco Vata to pull a goal back for Celtic in 32 minutes, and levelled seven minutes later, heading in Owen Moffat’s corner.
Moffat then got on the score-sheet for Celtic’s winner five minutes into the second half, following good set-up play by Vata and Matthew Anderson.
Reid will now focus on Saturday’s League two visit by East Fife, but says his young side did well.
He said: “It’s a good lesson for them, in terms of possession football and things like that.
“We’re always disappointed to lose the game, but we started quite brightly, got two goals of a start, and then lost poor goals from our perspective.
“But we need to put it into perspective – we had six first-team players missing.
“That gave some of the younger ones a chance, and some did quite well, but we had guys out of position.
“We tried to rest some of the players. In an ideal world I would have rested them all, but we’re short of numbers, so it was an opportunity for some of the fringe players and young ones.
“For spells they did OK, and it was a good lesson for them.
“Some of these boys have maybe not played at this tempo and things like that, but that’s how you learn the game.
“We’re disappointed to lose but our focus is 100 per cent on the league, that’s our bread and butter.
“We’ll gather them up and get ready for Saturday.”
Rovers are still searching for their first points of the season as East Fife visit Cliftonhill, having dropped down from last season’s League One.
Reid said: “Everybody’s desperate for points, but we’re not getting carried away.
“We’re only two games into the season, there’s a long way to go, and if we had won the two games I’d have been the exact same.
“It’s a big game, we want to win and get points on board.
“In the first two games we deserved more than we got, but it’s OK being glorious failures, you need to go and win games, so that’s what we’re aiming to do on Saturday.”
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