AYR United boss Scott Brown says his side were "nowhere near good enough" as they struck late to earn a draw against Arbroath.
The Honest Men trailed for a majority of the Scottish Championship fixture on Saturday after Findlay Marshall put the Red Lichties ahead after just 12 minutes.
Though the Somerset Park side made sure the points were shared in South Ayrshire as Kevin Holt levelled the fixture with just three regulation minutes remaining.
Despite the elation of a late goal, it was a performance that left Brown reeling.
“I thought the first half was dreadful," he told Ayr United TV. "We lacked any sort of intensity, quality on the ball, any sort of drive.
“We just accepted we were, hopefully, going to win the game – you can’t do that.
“Arbroath are a hard team, fit team, they work extremely hard and they won the battle in the first half.
“They pressed the living daylights out of us and we were slow on the ball, sloppy on the ball.”
The Somerset boss, who was forced into making changes to his starting 11, said his side seemed to lack belief throughout the tie.
Brown added: “I thought we should have had enough to go do it. It’s an opportunity for lads that have maybe not been playing – and you can maybe see why they’ve not been playing too much games.
“There’s only so much you can shout and try and enforce before the game. Our whole gameplan today was switch of play and we have not done that once.
“We can show them, we can help them out, we can walk through it but see if a person doesn’t want to do it – you don’t do it.
“It’s a little bit of a belief thing as well because they are very good players but it’s about having that belief to go execute.”
Brown took few positives away despite United coming back to earn a point and move back into the Scottish Championship play-off places.
He continued: “I felt like something was coming, we scored that goal and there is an opportunity to go up.
“The second half takes care of itself, but you need to have more desire to start the game with desire.
“We slowed the game down, played into teams’ hands and it’s nowhere near good enough.”
Share