Louis goal counts for nothing

“Losing is not nice, we will analyse it, sit down and look at it through video analysis and move on from it by learning from the mistakes.”

Louis Longridge has now scored in each of the Pars two opening league games but he was quick to point out that it is the result that is all important:-

“Throughout my career it is always about the team first before my own personal achievements. It is always good to score and I thought when I did score that we were going to kick on similar to what we did last week.”

Louis’ excellent strike came just three minutes after Josh Mullin’s stunning opener had secured Ross County the lead. His hopes were shattered when the opponents hit back just three minutes before the break:-

“We shot ourselves in the foot giving away a very sloppy goal defensively. I thought we switched off and then they got two and the experience in their team saw the game out.

“I felt in the first half that we were the better team without capitalising or going ahead. Second half they just saw the game out and it was through having experienced heads in their team.

“In the second half they sat in and tried to hit on the counterattack. Sometimes that is harder to break down. I felt defensively that they were quite solid and at the other end slight mistakes were punished and the third goal just killed the game.

“It was then a case of just trying your hardest to just get one back to try and make it exciting for the closing minutes of the game. It wasn’t to be.

“It is really early on in the season, we would have liked to have won the game, obviously we don’t want to lose any game and want to win every single game but it is early on and we just need to put it to bed and focus on the game on Tuesday night.

“It is never nice taking a defeat. I give 110% every game regardless so I think it is a wake up call that in this league it is going to be difficult this season, probably more difficult than it has been in previous years and we know that we cannot take the foot off the gas at any point. We need to push right to the 90th minute.

“I felt the first half we were bang right at it, we gave our all, created chances and looked like we had the spark and were ready to go for it. The second half was too flat for me. I think we need to maintain that first half performance for the full 90 minutes because in the end it has cost us.”

Allan Johnston had described the defeat to County as more a learning experience than a reality check. Louis agreed:-

“Defeats are always a learning curve. If we had gone on to win 3-1 or 3-2 the goals that we lost would have been brushed under the carpet because you have won. You would not look at the mistakes whereas when we lose, we can analyse where we went wrong.

“We need to learn from these things and hope that it doesn’t happen again. The quicker we learn in the early part of the season then that should stand us in good stead for the rest of the season.

“Losing is not nice, we will analyse it, sit down and look at it through video analysis and move on from it by learning from the mistakes.”

Given the manager’s intention to play “fringe and younger players” at Inverness on Tuesday night, Louis can probably concentrate on the Betfred Cup tie at home to Hearts on Saturday. He said:-

“You want to play in the big occasion games and I think next week’s is a big one for the club. Hearts have a big fan base, I have experience of playing against them before and they will bring numbers. Obviously the support from Dunfermline is brilliant as well so it will be a packed house.

“These are the games that you want to play in. We don’t have time to dwell on games, the fact that they are in the Premiership means that we will be underdogs but we will go and give our all and try and get a positive result.”

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