Time To Think Again

Morton defender Michael Doyle was disappointed at losing at home to Livingston for the second time in the space of 11 days. When asked how he really felt about Saturday's result Doyle said: "Obviously disappointed. We just played Livingston and we know what they’re going to do: they’re going to the same thing from the first minute to the last minute. They work hard in the middle third of the park and win second balls. We competed a lot better than we did two Tuesdays ago. But our home form was something we used as a platform to build on last season, and we’re disappointed to lose at home for the second time against the same opposition."

Livingston’s goal came from a route-one clearance, and Doyle insisted that is something Morton need to work on after conceding in comparable fashion away at Motherwell in the Betfred Cup. Doyle went on: "If you look at the goal, we lost a similar one against Motherwell, so we need to learn from these things because you’re going to get punished."

Morton manager Jim Duffy was unhappy with the way his team rushed their final ball. The right-back echoed those sentiments, stating it was something he felt was guilty of on an individual level saying: "We rushed it a wee bit in the last 25. We put balls into the box where their three centre-halves know that game and are very good at what they want to do. We looked at the last 20 minutes of the last Livingston game and realised we played a lot better when we got the ball forward, into the wide areas and put it in the box. But we did rush it on Saturday, and, personally, looking at my own game, I felt I rushed it a wee bit too much as well.”

Morton have some time work on the problems the two most recent games have highlighted thanks to the international break and Doyle says they must take this defeat on the chin and work hard in training to address Saturday’s shortcomings.  He went on: "We need to take it on the chin and try and improve over the week, over the weekend and going into next week as well. It’s a learning curve. It’s a long season and we need to get our head down, put it behind us and develop for the next game."