East Fife manager Gary Naysmith feels the first quarter of the season was a tale of missed opportunities as his side hover just outside the promotion playoff places.
But the Bayview boss has not given up hope of closing the gap on runaway leaders Arbroath over the coming weeks.
In an ideal world, the Fifers would be setting the pace in League Two as they aim to bounce back from last season’s relegation at the first time of asking, but they currently sit in fifth spot after winning just three of their opening nine games.
Arbroath on the other hand are flying, winning eight of their first nine games to move eight points clear at the top and 13 ahead of Naysmith’s Fifers.
It is already looking like a tall order for the Methil men to claw their way back into the title race, but that will not stop Naysmith from trying starting with Saturday’s trip to Queen’s Park.
“I think the way the league started, for us personally I’m disappointed,” he told Courier Sport. “I look back after the first nine games and I think we’re four points short of what we should have got.
“We’re probably a wee bit more points short of what I wanted after nine games but, if I’m being realistic how the games went, we’re on 11 points I think we should have been on 15.
“I’m not going to say it’s Arbroath to throw away, because Allan Moore has said that his Stirling team chased down a bigger lead and caught them.
“We’re the only team that’s gone up there and beat them. We matched them toe to toe and deserved to beat them.
“But for us, as a team with aspirations to catch them now, we’re going to have to keep improving ourselves but we’re also going to need other teams to start taking points off Arbroath.”
It is the Fifers’ home form which has particularly concerned Naysmith, having seen his side take just five points from a possible 15 at Bayview.
Having said that, he admitted the club have inadvertently contributed to their own downfall.
“Our home form is mid to bottom table, our away form is promotion, so we need to get our home form back to marrying the away form,” he added.
“When teams come to Bayview they just enjoy it, the pitch is the best in the league bar none.
“A lot of them are playing on 3G but they look at ours and think: “Wow.”
“I don’t want us to turn the pitch into a muddy field or anything like that, but teams are coming to Bayview and thinking they have a right good chance to play football.
“They get a bit of a lift because one, we got relegated and they see us as one of the big teams in the league, and two, the pitch.
“It’s working against us a bit right now, but as a team we need to rise above that.”