Cowdenbeath captain John Armstrong admits the Blue Brazil must stop shooting themselves in the foot if they are to climb off the Championship basement.
The Fife outfit scored twice at Hibs on Saturday but still came away empty handed after having their defensive frailties exposed.
Having gone in at the break 1-0 down to Jordon Forster’s opener, Jimmy Nicholl’s side came out fighting in the second half and went ahead thanks to quickfire goals from Sean Higgins and Jon Robertson.
But Hibs responded with a Dominique Malonga penalty and a last-gasp Jason Cummings strike to take all the spoils.
Cowdenbeath return to the capital to take on league leaders Hearts next weekend and Armstrong admits they must cut out the slack defending.
He said: “We are all pretty devastated how the match ended. Basically we’ve lost three sloppy goals by our standards and it’s something we’ve been trying to eradicate over the last couple of weeks in training.
“We’ve been doing it too often, we’re switching off at critical times. For 80 minutes we’re pretty good but when we do switch off we lose vital goals.
“It was important we started off right and the gaffer made the formation a bit more solid. We knew if we could get 20, 30 minutes into the game with it being level then the crowd might turn on them. “
“Second half, being a goal down, he said we may as well go for it to try and get back into the game. He changed it to a 3-5-2 and we created quite a few chances..
“We’ve got Hearts at Tynecastle next week and you have to take the positives; for a large part of the game we dealt with what they were throwing at us.”
Armstrong was furious with the penalty award that led to Malonga’s equaliser after he was adjudged to have pulled down Forster.
He added: “I did have a hold of his shirt but as far as I’m concerned, if you’re giving that then it’s a penalty every week in every game.
“It’s so soft, he is going nowhere and had his back to goal it’s not as if he has turned and I’ve pulled him back.
“He got the ball away and fell back but it’s really soft. I don’t believe for a second that if it had been in their box that we would have got a penalty.”
Despite seeing his side win, Hibs manager Alan Stubbs said: “The standards must be better because unfortunately we’re not at the level where we want to be.”