EK Thistle co-boss Alan Paterson says his side weren’t at the level to cope with Petershill as they were handed a sobering 6-1 home thrashing.
The Jags were downed by a Stephen Docherty hat-trick, Ronan Sweeney’s double and a Jonathan Branks strike late in the game. Jordan Scott put one into his own net but it did little to ease Thistle’s pain.
A six-goal hammering to third-place Petershill leaves EK 12th in West of Scotland Football League Conference C, just three places above basement boys Lanark United. It was another tough game for Paterson and Russell Craig’s young side after a 3-0 loss at Kilsyth the previous weekend.
And Paterson said: “We were dreadful, absolutely dreadful. First and foremost, I won’t take anything away from Petershill. For me, they are the best team in this league.
“I think between them and Drumchapel United, one of those teams is going to win the title. Petershill can do this to any team. But the problem I have got is the manner we lost in.
“It was poor. The manner in which we gave away the goals were criminal. It wasn’t just about individuals, as a team we were just really bad.
“We didn’t track runners or anything, it was baffling. We looked as if we had a lack of ideas.
But we might have just picked the wrong team. We need to look at ourselves as a management team and ask if we played boys in positions they can’t do.
“It’s not through any fault of their own. Some of the guys have only been playing junior football for a couple of months. Unfortunately we had eight or nine players who were poor and their players were at the top of their game.”
It doesn’t get any easier for the Showpark side who now face a tough trip to league leaders Drumchapel. Their next match after that then comes against Neilston, who are second.
Patterson added: “Everything they hit seemed to fly into our net. Sometimes you just need to hold your hands up and say you got beat by the better team.
“I feel as if we are in every game. Even against Kilsyth, we competed. But on Saturday we were just terrible.
It’s back to the drawing board this week.
“We need to lick our wounds and work hard in training. We will need to try and rectify it as it’s another tough couple of weeks coming up.
“We have Drumchapel who will fancy themselves for the league. We have Neilston who are breathing down their necks and then there’s St Roch’s to come in a few weeks.
“So it isn’t going to be easy. This run of fixtures will be tricky but we have no time to sit about feeling sorry for ourselves.
"We believe in the squad we have. At the start of the season, when we looked at the league, our season won’t be defined on games like this.”
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