JIM Duffy blamed a ‘criminal error’ for his side’s 1-0 loss to Livingston at Cappielow on Saturday afternoon.

Livi forward Danny Mullen scored the only goal of the game in the second half to subject Morton to their first league defeat of the new season. 

Boss Duffy was raging with the manner in which the goal was conceded — from a Ton corner up the other end.

A long clearance from Nikolay Todorov sent Mullen scampering upfield and Mark Russell and Derek Gaston weren’t able to prevent the eventual winner with Duffy critical of his players for failing to deal with such a bread and butter situation.

He said: “It was always going to be an extremely tough match because we were fully aware of Livingston’s qualities. 

“And I thought they were very well organised, they made very few errors and denied us any great space.

“But even when we did find space our final pass was really poor. When you get limited opportunities you’ve got to make the most of them. But in saying that, I don’t think we should’ve lost the game. 

“It was a criminal error, really. Just a long ball up the top and we’ve got two players there to deal with it. That’s a basic error.

“If you’re not playing as well as you’d like to play, that was it. I don’t think there was too much goalmouth action for either goalkeeper. 

“Although I think, to be fair to Livingston, they had more balls in and around the box than we did.

“It was one of those games though that if you’re not playing well you’d take the point, but we’ve ended up with nothing. 

“Fair play to Livi because when they got their goal they were very difficult to break down.”

Duffy was perplexed at his side’s decision to lump hopeful balls into the box from distance where the only attacker in blue and white over six foot was Robert Thomson. 

He also admits his players made too many wrong decisions during the course of the game.

He said: “It was a game of a lot of second balls and a lot thrown in, but that’s not our style to just throw balls in there. It baffled me a little bit at times that we kept throwing balls into the box from 30/35 yards against three big centre-backs.

“You could probably hear me that I was screaming at the players to play the ball into midfield but players make their own decisions on the pitch and we made too many poor ones.”