Brewster: We didn't show up
by Gordon Pope, 22 March 2008
Inverness manager Craig Brewster was left gutted as his men slumped to a ninth SPL match without a victory at Rugby Park this weekend.
Kilmarnock came back from a goal down to win the match 4-1, but the deficit could have been even greater had referee Stephen Finnie not missed a blatant handball on the line by Roy McBain.
After the match Brewster said that his side simply failed to perform in the second half.
He said: “(I was) extremely disappointed in the second half, I thought in the first half we were decent. Ok, we never really troubled Alan Combe but I thought we were up for it, played some decent stuff and they hit a great free kick and it just hit Frazer Wright and they were back into it.
“Then in the second half it was one way traffic for a long spell and every time they went up the park they looked dangerous. We didn’t stop crosses coming in, we didn’t get close to our midfield men in the second half and they punished us.”
The Highlanders failed to utilise front men Marius Niculae and Graham Bayne with neither striker testing the Kilmarnock goalkeeper. Brewster refused to blame the pair and pointed the finger at the lack of supply to the attackers.
“I thought they worked hard but, at the end of the day, strikers are there to score goals and maybe we didn’t get enough ammunition to them enough. The heads go down when we lose the second goal, and really they punished us.” he said.
Caley were without record goalscorer Dennis Wyness, who did not even make Brewster’s squad for the match. Wyness has had talks on a new contract postponed until the end of the season and could leave the club. But the Inverness boss says that the door is not closed on the 31-year-old.
He said: “Dennis wasn’t in the squad today. We’ll look at things and see what happens for next Saturday. I spoke to him on Monday and said the contract talks had gone on long enough and I just said I’m putting them on hold until the summer so we’ll wait and see the reaction we get from Dennis.”