Stirling Albion manager Stuart McLaren issued an apology to the club's supporters following last Saturday's heavy defeat at the hands of East Fife.

The Binos shipped six goals without reply as the Fifers ran riot at Forthbank, and the manager admitted there were no excuses for the performance which saw them slip to their heaviest loss of the season.

McLaren told Stirling News Sport: “It was poor from us from the very early stages. When you concede a goal after four minutes and are two down after 15, and both are largely of your own doing, you don't give yourselves a decent chance to win the game. It is really poor. As a group there is nothing more we can do than admit that and apologise to the supporters. We have to make sure we do everything we can to rectify it.

“The eleven boys who were out there at any given moment are capable of far, far better than that, and we just have to hold our hands up because it is nowhere near good enough and it is nowhere near what we have shown. I wasn't overly concerned going into the game because we have some very capable and very experienced players at the back. To go and be 2-0 down early on was poor.

“A number of times we have suffered setbacks during games and we have come back and picked up some points. If we have been on the end of a defeat it has usually been by the odd goal. We have had some discussion with the players and we have to say that as a team we lacked a bit of will to try and change what had gone wrong in the early stages of the game. We lacked that bit of belief and showed a bit of fear, and that is nothing like the group of players that I know and have been working with. It is really disappointing.”

McLaren admitted that the Binos' already-slim chances of making the League Two playoffs are now hanging by a thread, and he bemoaned his side's habit of contributing to their own downfall.

He said: “Never say it's over until it is, but you have got to be a realist and say that it would take something unbelievable to change it round. The real underlying problem for me is that we keep making things difficult for ourselves, over the last two or three months in particular.”

The manager is now hoping that last Saturday's loss means his players will be desperate to prove a point when they take on local rivals East Stirlingshire this weekend.

McLaren added: “You have got to be honest with the players. If they are honest with themselves they will realise where it was that we let ourselves down. There have been times where things have gone against us but we have always shown a bit of resilience. We have to work hard at training and get them to that point where they want to go out and prove that they are the players we think they are.”