Steven Ferguson was disappointed Ross County didn’t give a good “account of ourselves” in their 4-1 defeat at Motherwell.
Staggies defender Liam Fontaine gave them the dream start with his first goal of the season early on. That only served to spark third-placed Well into action, however, with two goals in the space of eight minutes from Mark O’Hara and Allan Campbell leaving the Highlanders on the backfoot.
Campbell knocked home his second and Tony Watt added a late fourth to seal the points for Stephen Robinson’s men, in a result which once again tightens up the bottom of the table, with Hamilton Accies’ victory at Ibrox leaving County five points above the relegation play-off spot.
Ferguson said: “We gave ourselves a right good chance in the game by scoring so early through Liam Fontaine.
“When you come away from home and get that early goal it’s all going according to plan.
“Very quickly after that though, we didn’t really make the account of ourselves we were looking for, or how we felt we had been playing.
“We felt we could have done so much better than we did.
“To be fair to Motherwell they were well on it.
“They would obviously have been hurting with the run they had been on and they were going all out to put that right.
“We knew that was a danger for us, and we knew we would be facing that, but we expected to deal with that a lot better than we did.”
Ferguson says County – who are eighth, five points above Hamilton in the relegation place – need to defend better as a team.
The Staggies have conceded the most goals in the Premiership so far this season. Their goals against tally of 59 is nine higher than bottom two Hearts and Accies.
Ferguson said: “Every goal we concede, we feel we could do better.
“We are certainly not in the way of just finger pointing and blaming people. Collectively we can do things a lot better.
“We got punished pretty brutally for maybe not managing to deal with things as well as we should. Sometimes you get away with it, but on this occasion we did not.
“We lost a goal late on, and Stuart Kettlewell and I take responsibility for that.
“We were chasing the game, trying to get a goal and trying to get something at the top end of the pitch, but we left ourselves exposed.
“Motherwell punished us, but that’s the gamble.
“Sometimes you get away with it, but sometimes you don’t. We didn’t get away with it on this occasion.”
