St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright didn’t have an easy Monday morning debrief.
The Perth boss explained that it would be simpler to pick over a weekend defeat if there were glaring deficiencies in his side.
But that wasn’t the case in the 4-3 loss to title-chasing Aberdeen on Saturday.
Instead Wright has been left to bemoan the dreaded “individual errors” that are the bane of a coach’s life.
“It’s frustrating,” he said. “Managers can say that every goal is a mistake.
“But if you go back over the four goals we conceded on Saturday, with a bit more composure we should clear the first ball for the first goal, for the second goal we should take care of the ball better and we lose it in a bad area, the third goal is a comedy of errors, and the fourth goal we don’t make the right decision.
“Games change on individual errors. It’s down to decision making and we’ve just got to do better.
“It would be easier to manage if I was able to come in on a Monday morning and say our shape got torn apart, we were short in midfield or we defended too high. But it wasn’t any of those things.
“We made poor mistakes that gave a good side opportunities and that’s down to individuals.”
Danny Swanson’s performance against the Dons was one of the reasons for optimism going into Saints’ next game at Dundee on Friday night.
Wright said: “He’s gives us a spark and has a bit of quality on the ball to get us higher up the pitch.
“In the cold light of day there was nothing between the teams. We weren’t backs to the wall or cut open.
“There are always positives David Wotherspoon’s goal, Graham Cummins put in a shift, the full-backs played well. But we know we have to eradicate the errors.
“It’s about doing the simple things like keeping the ball better.”
Saints may be on a winless eight-game run, but they are still very much on course for their primary goal for the season.
“The one thing we’ll do is remain calm,” Wright said.
“The players are frustrated. They feel that we should have got more points recently.
“But there’s no panic. We know we have to improve and we know how we have to improve. We’ve got enough games left to get the points to make us top six.
“If we had been better in these last six games we’d probably have guaranteed top six already, but we’re still in a good position to do that.
“We’ve been on a poor run but we haven’t dropped out of the top six.
“We’ve stayed in touch with Ross County and stayed ahead of the rest.”
Murray Davidson will return from suspension at Dens Park and Wright is also hopeful that Brian Easton will be available.
He reported: “He should be back training by the middle of the week.
“That will give him a chance.
“But I must say I was more than happy with both full-backs on Saturday. I thought Darnell and Scobbs were very good.
“Muzz’s ban was for one game, so he’ll definitely be back in the squad.”