Warriors brought back down to earth

His side were far from their midweek performance as they went down 2-0 to East Fife .

And the boss was particularly disappointed in the manner of defeat.

“We got what we deserved,” mused the Warriors chief. “We simply were not at it as we had been last Tuesday night.

“We made a few changes with substitutions and we improved a litte but ultimately that’s what we deserved. It was a penalty at the end too in my opinion.

“I made four or five changes and maybe that affected things and we had low-key training before the game after the midweek match so maybe it was a result of that but not enough of us performed.

“Some have held their hands up, admitted it and we’ll learn.”

From the first whistle the Methil men were by far the better team, the only surprise of the match being that it took until the second half to get the goals their dominance deserved.

In the end, though, Scott Agnew’s brace was enough to end Stenhousemuir’s Betfred Cup campaign after defeat to Dundee United and ahead of this week’s trip to Premiership side Hearts.

East Fife needed to give a positive response after their own 2-0 defeat to Cowdenbeath, who the Warriors host on Saturday, and they did just that.

They started well and Anton Dowds went close to opening the scoring after a couple of minutes but he couldn’t turn Chris Duggan’s delivery towards goal.

The home side stayed on the front foot with Danny Denholm and Pat Slattery going close.

It took Stenny half an hour to ask any sort of question of East Fife but the home defence coped with Mark McGuigan’s close range effort.

As long as the game stayed 0-0, there was always a chance the visitors could snatch a goal out of the blue.

But it was East Fife who managed to get their noses in front on the 56th minute.

Denholm caused problems for the visitors all afternoon and was in the thick of things when he picked out Agnew on the edge of the box. The midfielder got the ball out from under his feet brilliantly, and curled beyond Graeme Smith.

The goal served to wake Stenny from their long slumber, and they enjoyed their best spell of the game.

McGuigan hit the post and sub Mark Munro flashed a shot wide.

But home nerves were settled with five minutes to go when the hosts scored a second. Aaron Dunsmore rampaged into the box and was brought down by David Marsh and Agnew tucked away the spot-kick.