Gus MacPherson has called upon his Queen’s Park players to be more ruthless when they are dominating games.

MacPherson watched on with disbelief as his side were mugged by Montrose at Hampden on Saturday despite creating numerous chances.

As so often happens when a side is so profligate, the sucker punch duly arrived.

“There was so much frustration after the Montrose game. We played well and created good chances,” he said.

“It was a game that was very similar to when we played Annan in the first game of the season in terms of how we dominated possession but didn’t capitalise on our good play, then we made one mistake and were punished.

“You get games like that, although you don’t want them to come along to often. We’ve had two at home now and lost both games because of one mistake during the games and we’ve been punished.

“We’ve spoken to the players about it, as were extremely disappointed and frustrated on Saturday after the game.

“It’s a bit of a cliché, but clichés were made for a reason, it’s plainly obvious that if you dominate for long periods as we have done then you have to score when you’re on top, especially when we’re creating good chances.

“That’s the lesson for the players. We want to try to play the game and be positive, but we’ve got to make sure that when we’re doing that we keep it tight at the back and we don’t give the opposition a lift when we’re in control of the game.”

MacPherson knows that his players cannot let the same scenario occur against Elgin this Saturday in the quarter-finals of the Petrofac Training Cup.

“We’ve played everyone in the league now so it’s a good time to get a break from that with a cup tie, albeit against a team from our division,” he said.

“It’s only a couple of weeks since we beat Elgin 3-1 at Hampden but it was a tight affair. We got a break with the third goal but up until that point it could have went either way, so I’m expecting another tight game, but we’ve got to try and make that home advantage count.

“I think it will be close, the game at Hampden was very tight. We played well and passed the ball well, we kept good possession as we tend to do.

“I think though that Elgin would feel slightly aggrieved in terms of the goals that they lost on the day. There were complaints that it could have been a free-kick in the lead-up to our first goal, and certainly the third goal was a total freak that won’t happen again when the goalkeeper made a blunder.

“You can see from the league positions that there isn’t a lot between the two clubs, so it will be a tight affair on Saturday.”