QUEEN’S Park delivered the perfect response to a wretched seven days by dispatching title rivals Ayr United in fine fashion.
A Dom Thomas penalty and Nick McAllister own goal saw the Spiders open up a four-point gap at the top of the Championship on a day of drama for Owen Coyle's team, which had earlier seen them kicked out of the Scottish Cup for fielding an ineligible player.
Here's what we learned.
1) Response shows Queen's Park's resolve
This has been a testing seven days for Queen’s Park. What began with a hiding to title rivals Dundee, got even worse when Simon Murray, their talismanic captain, was sold to Ross County just minutes before a Scottish Cup tie with Inverness Caley Thistle. Life at Larbert seemed to be on the mend when they soundly saw off the Highlanders, only for events to take a drastic turn again after it emerged Euan Henderson had been ineligible for that game.
Queen’s were duly chucked out of the cup this afternoon, but this was the perfect response.
“We’re sorry, we’ll own it and we’ll learn from it,” was the message from chief executive Leann Dempster in the wake of that decision (which now sees Inverness taking on Livingston), while manager Owen Coyle had asked his players to focus. Boy, did they heed that message.
In a first win over a direct title rival this season (the pre-match record read lost four and drawn one), Thomas was electric; Connor Shields - unfairly cast as a pantomime villain at Motherwell in recent times - showed all of the attributes that once had Sunderland taking a punt on him; and Malachi Boateng looked several levels above.
2) Ayr should stick to the game plan
With Andy Murdoch still missing and Malachi Boateng on the opposite team, Lee Bullen’s apparent instruction to skip the midfield entirely seemed entirely understandable. That was until the game panned out as it did.
Ball after ball flew over the heads of Ben Dempsey, Josh Mullin, and Dipo Akinyemi, spat in the general direction of Jayden Mitchell-Lawson. Between Marcel Oakley’s astuteness and the punts stretching the Ochilview boundaries, it just did not work. In the first half especially, Ayr United looked a pale imitation of the team that had so convincingly swept Cove Rangers aside all but a week ago.
For a time, they clicked into gear - Akinyemi had one cleared off the line, as did Mitchell-Lawson - but the damage had been done.
3) Lack of depth may just be sides’ undoing - but don’t bet on it
While some are still harbouring hopes of a title race in the top flight, they’d be better turning their attention to the second tier. As ever, it’s the place to be, with just five points separating leaders Queen's Park and third-placed Dundee. With just 12 matches left, it would take a brave punter to discount any of the three runners at this stage.
If tonight's match gave us any sort of hint as to who will be able to pencil in alluring trips to such places as Livingston and Paisley come May, you could argue the lack of depth in these two may prove their undoing. That’s not to say their benches were full of poor players - far from it - but when Dundee don’t even start Alex Jakubiak, Ben Williamson and Max Anderson as par for the course, the gap in resources is apparent.
