TON boss Jim Duffy says his side lacked a ‘creative spark’ on Saturday as they crumbled at Hampden in a shock 2-0 defeat to League One outfit Queen’s Park in the Irn-Bru Cup.

The Greenock men started with an extremely attack-minded line-up yet failed to trouble Queen’s goalkeeper Andrew Murphy throughout the 90 minutes, and Duffy didn’t hold back with his assessment of his side’s attacking shortcomings.

He said: “We played a very attack-minded team. We played with two out-and-out wingers, two strikers, two footballing midfield players and two full-backs with the license to go forward. 

“So we couldn’t really have played much more attacking players on the pitch.

“But you need those players to be at the top of their game and be creative with that bit of spark and I felt that was missing [on Saturday]. 

“We didn’t really put any quality crosses in the box, and on the rare occasion that we did, they were poor. 

“When we got into the box we wanted too many touches. We were nowhere near good enough creatively.

“Against a team who are organised and disciplined, if you don’t move the ball quick enough they’ll just get back into shape again, and that’s exactly what they did every time. 

“They just filled that gap every time we took an extra touch and they did it well.

“Sometimes it’s maybe even a case of playing too many attacking players. Sometimes it may be better to try and draw people out and have an extra midfield player. 

“But because it’s Hampden we went with two wingers to try and stretch the game and try to open the game up. But it didn’t produce anything in the element we were looking for.”

Duffy was disappointed with aspects of his side’s defending.

Another headed goal opened the scoring for Queen’s Park after the four headers conceded by Morton last weekend at Easter Road.

But the manager was more irritated at the fact that it was a cheap free-kick, given away by Tam O’Ware, that resulted in Adam Cummins notching the first goal of the afternoon.

When asked if he is concerned about the number of headed efforts his side are conceding, Duffy said: “It’s not so much the header, it’s more that they’ve got to compete a lot better. 

“If it’s a someone who is six-foot-five and gets above you and it’s a good delivery then sometimes there’s not a lot you can do about it.

“But we keep giving away cheap free-kicks which allows teams to do that. That’s more my frustration, that we didn’t show some more common sense in those situations.”