Falkirk boss Houston: '˜I'd be booing too'

Yesterday’s 4-1 home hammering from Queen of the Souith gave the Bairns their worst start to a season since returning to the second tier seven years ago.

The players are in again today to go through what went wrong in another heavy defeat, and one that had the fans booing the team off at half-time and those who were left – at full-time too.

Boss Houston admitted: “I’d be booing as well. 100 per cent.”

He added: “For every bit of abuse, whether to me or the players, I totally accept that. It’s my responsibility – I bring the players in. The supporters have every right.

“We went back too much. We defended poorly. They were more aggressive than us.

“It’s games like that which get managers into trouble, I accept that, I know the consequences if we don’t get it turned round, but so long as I’m here I’m going to work even harder to get it turned round.

“We’ll be in [today] to watch the video and show them the horror show I watched for the last 90 minutes.”

The boss had been looking for a reaction to the previous 3-1 defeat to Dunfermline when he had been angered by his players’ application.

Yesterday was more measured, and he knows the players are smarting from a season which promised much in the Betfred Cup group stages, but has delivered next to nothing since.

Houston added: “Confidence is really low, but where that low confidence has come from it’s very hard to work out because we were terrific in Betfred Cup, had a good first half against St Mirren but lost the game and our discipline and credit to the Saints for that.

“We dominated Dumbarton for 60 minutes and all that was missing was the goal, and gave [QOS] the first goal again and had to chase, but we are soft centred. Their defender head the ball 20 yards, ours head it out the park sideways for a shy. There’s a lot of work to be done and a lot of confidence building.

“The game will have knocked them. We were dominated by a better team.

“There were no loud voices this week, I went through them last week. It would be senseless of me to go through them again.

“You can see the heads are down, they have to stand up to be counted though.

At the end of the day we have to look through it, Queens getting the early goals gave them a huge lift – and they deserved it. At half-time and 2-0 down I said the next goal was crucial and sent them out to get it. Four minutes later we were 4-0 down.

“We need to go back to basics, although this was to be a day for back to basics. Last week I accused them of not working hard enough, they ran about this week but we didn’t play as a team. We were really poor.

“I accept repsonsibility, though I didn’t have a lot of options but that’s the way it is. I still felt it was a team that should have been good enough to give QOS a game and maybe win it. I was wrong.”

Houston’s side have now lost 11 goals in four league matches, scoring just four in response and they were on the back-foot almost immediately when QOS scored with their first attack.

The boss said: “The goals we lost were soft-centred. To lose a goal 70 seconds, we’re chasing the game straight away.

“All the good intentions was to go and get it right after last week’s abysmal performance. I’d say today was more abysmal.”

MATCH REPORT: Falkirk 1 QOS 4

MATCH STATS: Falkirk v QOS match stats