MORTON playmaker Charlie Telfer admits manager Jonatan Johansson was right to give his players a stern talking to after Saturday’s 5-1 ‘horrific’ drubbing against Ayr.

The Ton boss went through his players after they completely collapsed in the last 20 minutes and allowed the visitors to romp to an emphatic win.

Telfer revealed some harsh words were received from the manager after the game about their display.

But he says the players deserved the dressing down they got from the boss — and insists they can bounce back from the humiliating home defeat.

The former Rangers and Dundee United man, who signed at Cappielow this summer from Dutch side Almere City on a one-year deal, says there is a ‘real problem’ if they are not able to recover from such a bad mauling.

He told the Tele: “The manager said everything that had to be said.

“To be honest we all knew how he would be feeling about our performance and he told us that.

“The manager is a positive man and even after he’s told us everything we needed to hear in there that we can build on it for next week, if we’re not able to then there’s a real problem there.

“He’s a positive manager and he’ll not dwell on it too much.”

United had opened the scoring via Lawrence Shankland before Telfer restored parity with his first goal in Morton colours after 35 minutes.

The game had been finely poised at 1-1 after 70 minutes but Ayr then ran amok, with three of their subsequent four goals scored inside a disastrous eight-minute spell for the hosts.

There was a catalogue of errors by the home side in almost all the goals conceded, and Telfer said as a team it was simply not good enough.

He said: “We had a chance through Ross MacLean right after Michael Tidser missed the penalty and we collapsed and made it really easy for them.

“I don’t think it’s fair to highlight someone in particular but as a whole as a defensive unit, that’s including the strikers and the midfielders, that 20-minute period was horrific.

“You can’t do that at this level and I think after 65 to 70 minutes we were happy with our performance.

“The team looked like they could go on and win the game. 

“These things happen but hopefully they won’t happen again and we’ll have to learn from that.

“We’ve got a good group of boys and we’ll go away and learn from it.”