Another home horror show as Albion romp to an easy win

Arbroath's dire home record continued with a lame capitulation to an average Albion Rovers side who'd put 5 past us the last time the teams met in December but hadn't won in their last 7 games. Our new look strengthened defence, which had allowed only 1 goals the previous 4 games, allowed Big John Gemmell the easiest hat-trick of his entire career.

Albion were first to every ball, and looked fitter, and hungrier than the Lichties. Arbroath could not string two passes together and had quite a few chances but no serious attempts on goals, missing some glaring opportunities.

Another unacceptable performance from Arbroath. Again we started off far too cautiously Very poor passing, poor delivery into the box together with our lack of pace up front meant a frustrating afternoon. Having said that we had chances to level second half - with a bit of composure or luck which were both in short supply. We were lethargic and second best all first half and then, showing some signs of life second half, it was a cruel blow to lose a softer penalty. Despite going two down after the break, Raeside's headed goal on 64 minutes meant briefly `game on' but a catalogue of errors and slack defending let Rovers in for two easy goals late on - the home crowd were well and truly deflated.

Albion first came midway through the first half after a rare spell of pressure on the Albion goal a long through was misread by Tully and the Rovers winger calmly slotted past Hill. Second half with the stiff breeze at our back we huffed and puffed, spent more time in their half but did little with it. The referee gave a soft penalty for an aimless free kick forward claiming Raeside (?) had pushed their forward aside).

Once again we proved we just cannot use the wind with quite a few passes overhit. But there was better delivery into the box but we seem to have lost the killer touch - bodies were eithet missing when chances came up or getting in each others way..

This cautious approach, especially at home, is a real turn-off. even normally reliable players such as Tully and Flyer had poor days and key players such as Sellars and Tosh had shockers. Up front the Tosh-Brazil partnership is just painfully slow so little is ever created - they so better playing with a regular winger but Webster was introduced too late to make any difference. Even Bryan Scot when he came on was mobile but missed a couple of chances. No surprise that our goals came from Robbie Raeside nodding in a well-taken Sellars corner. Ferguson on the left and Flyer tried but lacked any quality today and Black like Sellars was poor. The only saving grace was all our rivals only drew so we have not lost much ground

The referee was a disgrace, bizarrely inconsistent and gifting them a very soft penalty at a key point in the game. But the official are not the reason we failed today

The crowd just passed 500 and more home shockers like this will see this drop further before the season's end. we need to take home game's by the scruff of the neck instead of this cagey, wait-and-see mentality which makes us ripe for the plucking. We received a right good plucking. Plucking useless