ST MIRREN caretaker Allan McManus was left ‘devastated’ after his dug out debut ended in a gut-wrenching 4-3 defeat at Dunfermline.

The youth supremo took temporary charge of the Buddies on Saturday following Alex Rae’s departure but couldn’t help his team’s followers suffering another difficult Saturday.

John Sutton twice gave Saints the lead at East End Park only for a Farid El Alagui goal three minutes from time to inflict a killer blow.

McManus said: “I’m absolutely devastated for the players. I think they’ve put everything and more into the game.

“They’ve done everything that I’ve asked them and I think they played some fantastic stuff.

“They had numerous opportunities in the game and just where we are in the league just now we seem to be getting punished for every single little mistake.

“But there is no point in feeling down about it, we’ve got to rally and I’ve said to the boys if they play like that and they work as hard as that then it is going to turn for them very quickly.”

Calamitous defending has been St Mirren’s forte this season and the curse struck again. Firstly Andy Webster deflected the ball into his own net, before Rocco Quinn’s attempted passback allowed El Alagui the chance to grab the winner.

McManus said: “You can’t legislate for it.

“When you are at the top end of the table you get the breaks and on another day they go by the post, but what can you do?

“As I say, no point in feeling sorry for ourselves, the boys have got to believe by working as hard as they did today and with the style of football that they played today then they’ve got to believe that we will all get out of this position very quickly.

“The confidence comes from within. It is all down to hard work and obviously we have just tried to vary the style of play a wee bit and I think it worked for us in a lot of occasions but sometimes when individual or small mistakes happen we are getting punished at the moment.

“But we’ll get back into the training ground on Monday and we keep working as hard as we possibly can to rectify it next week again.”