DAVID Hopkin has defended his side after some Morton supporters made their feelings known during their six-goal hammering against Dundee United.

Fans were frustrated as the Tangerines ran riot, with ex-Ton striker Lawrence Shankland netting a hat-trick.

However, the Morton manager says that his young players will learn from the drubbing and has backed them to react positively.

He told the Tele: “We’ve got a young side and we’ve got fans who are disappointed, but I think they’ve seen the league champions.

“We’re a young team, we had six boys under the age of 21 playing who have hardly played any football, so they’ll learn as long as we move on from it and I’m convinced that they will.

“I said to the players that it’s three points that we’ve lost, but we’re still where we want to be in the league, so we need to react in the right way next weekend.

“There will be ups and downs over the course of the season, we’ve had three months to put a squad together, we’ve got no mixture of players.

“We’ve either got kids or guys who are over the age of 30.

“There’s no mixture between the squad, as long as we learn from it that’s the main thing.

“It’s not a nice feeling losing like this but we had that at Inverness and we managed to bounce back from that so we should be able to do it again.”