Liam Smith won’t need a Monday morning debrief to get to the bottom of where his Dundee United team slipped up at Somerset Park on Saturday.
The right-back, who was playing against his old team for the first time, pointed out that there was no mystery surrounding the 2-0 defeat to Ayr United which cost the Tangerines both their 100% Championship record and their unbeaten one.
“You can’t win every game but the manner in which we lost was not acceptable,” he said. We didn’t turn up and Ayr took advantage.
“They are a good side and we can’t afford to take our foot off the gas at any point.
“The second half was better. In the first half, we were outworked which can’t happen.
“First and foremost, we need to look at ourselves.
“I don’t think we passed the ball enough, which is what we’ve been doing for the first four games. We’ll pick ourselves up and see what we need to improve.”
The post-match comments by Ian McCall would suggest that Ayr may have been more fired up than usual to get the better of United.
Smith doesn’t believe that was necessarily the case.
“From first-hand experience, I know Ayr’s philosophy going into every game,” he said.
“Particularly playing against Dundee United, who they did well against last season and they would have been keen to keep that going.
“Me, Shanks and the other boys knew that they have a squad of good players. They will right in about it.
“Fair play to them. But we didn’t do enough – we didn’t compete and put our stamp on the game. We didn’t deserve to take anything.”
It was a day to forget for the two former Ayr men.
United boss Robbie Neilson felt (rightly) that the service to Shankland wasn’t good enough, while Danny Harvie got the better of Smith in the build-up to Ayr’s first goal and then the full-back gave away the penalty for the second.
“They were both straight balls,” said the former Hearts man.
“The second goal, I’ve given away the penalty so I need to hold my hands up for that. No complaints.”
By the time Neilson had spoken to the Press he had seen footage of a penalty he felt his team should have been awarded when Louis Appere was tripped. Referee Bobby Madden deemed it to be outside the box rather than in.
Smith said: “It’s frustrating when you don’t get decisions that shift the game but we’ll get ones that go our way throughout the season.
“We were getting ourselves back in the game before Ayr’s penalty. They are dangerous, especially on the break. After they scored a second, it was an uphill task.”
Neilson is content with United’s league position – they are still first, so why wouldn’t he be. But he was by no means content with the fact that 45 minutes of football had passed before his team got going.
“The first half performance was nowhere near good enough,” he reflected.
“Second half we were better. If we want to win a league we have to perform as we did in the second half but for 90 minutes.
“We know it’s going to be a hard league. We’re sitting at the top of it. If we’d lost the first game of the season and won our next four the atmosphere would be different and the questions would be different.
“We hope to stay at the top. We’ve had a wee dip but over the course of a season there will be more dips like this.
“We have to get back in on Monday and make sure we beat Arbroath on Saturday.”
Although United have now lost three games in a row at Somerset Park and Ayr deserved to win this one, had Nicky Clark’s header not come back off the post seconds before the Ayr penalty they probably would have dug themselves out of a hole as they did against Partick Thistle.
It was by no means a totally one-sided contest, as the previous matches in Ayr had been.
