Being part-time caught up on East Kilbride - Allan

Scott Allan believes being part-time caught up with his East Kilbride side as the Scottish League 2 champions lost to holders St Mirren despite having led 3-0 in their Premier Sports Cup group-stage tie on Tuesday. The victory means St Mirren will progress to the knock-out stage as Group C winners unless Dunfermline Athletic win by three goals when they visit Paisley on Sunday. East Kilbride miss out and disappointed coach Allan told the BBC Scottish Football Podcast : "They'd put so much in, especially in the last couple of weeks having the Saturday Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, so there's been no kind of respite for us. "Played some fantastic football, really brave, go 3-0 up and then last half an hour, when St Mirren got that goal back, momentum shifts, St Mirren get their tails up and I just think the pace and power of St Mirren in that last 25 minutes and our boys were kinda dead on their feet the last 25 minutes just trying to hang in there. "But I felt to lose the game was extremely extremely harsh considering the effort they'd put in for large parts of the game. "We'd have been into the next stage of the competition, so really disappointed." East Kilbride manager Mick Kennedy has completely rebuilt their squad despite their title win, with 13 coming in and 17 leaving this summer. "Ultimately, we're still four players away from being our strongest squad," Allan suggested. "The big thing for us is we're creating chances and we're having a lot of control in matches and to show you can do that against Premiership opposition and obviously last season's Scottish Cup finalists in Dunfermline, it stands us in good stead. "There's a lot of belief in the squad, but we haven't had time yet to work on how we look behind the ball when we're attacking, because we only train twice a week. We don't want to be conceding four goals against anybody."