ANDY GRAHAM rued “poor decisions” which led to his Alloa side conceding five goals to a strong Falkirk team.

The Bairns visited the Indodrill Stadium on the back of two disappointing results – first a draw with bottom of the league Edinburgh City followed up by a Scottish Cup exit to League 2 side Bonnyrigg Rose.

Meanwhile, Alloa’s unbeaten run had come to an end the previous week against Motherwell, but the clear positives on display had done nothing to damage momentum.

Two changes were made to Alloa’s starting XI, with Miko Virtanen replacing the injured Steven Hetherington in central midfield.

On a more positive note, Bobby Wales returned to the club on loan from Kilmarnock for the remainder of the season, taking a place on the left of the three in place of Quinn Coulson.

Conor Sammon retained his spot up top after scoring Alloa’s equaliser in the Scottish Cup tie the week before.

The first half played out rather tightly, Stefan Scougall having Alloa’s clearest chance of the half with a sharp long range effort, caught well by Falkirk’s Sam Long.

Alloa knocked the ball about well in the opening 45, but Falkirk grew into the game and tested PJ Morrison as well, with Alloa’s number one making a great save to deny Aidan Nesbitt.

Falkirk remained on the attack, however, with Morrison eventually beaten at the near post by Callumn Morrison to open the scoring.

Heading into the break, the message was to put pressure on Falkirk and find a way back into the game.

Unfortunately, Alloa weren’t able to do that, with Falkirk’s confidence mounting, allowing them to slot four more past the Wasps’ defence.

Speaking to WaspTV after the match, Graham expressed his disappointment at Alloa’s second half performance.

“[I’m] really disappointed,” Graham said. “Not in the first half, I thought the first 45 minutes was really competitive, quite even.

“The disappointing thing for me is that the start to the second half was really poor. We spoke at half time that we wanted to come out and put Falkirk under pressure.

“We did the exact opposite – we made poor decisions all over the pitch, that’s not individual mistakes, it was poor decisions all over the pitch.

“It led to Falkirk getting the second and I felt, at that point, they really had their tails up but credit to Falkirk, I thought they were excellent today.

“They fully deserved to beat us, the disappointing thing for me was that when you go two, three [down], that’s when you need to be mentally stronger than we were.

“By that, I mean passing the ball to each other, we didn’t string four or five passes together after that.

“That was the really disappointing thing for me, however, we’re not going to get carried away by a bad 45 minutes.”

While the defeat will be a tough one to take, Alloa can waste no time in responding.

With the weather over the Christmas period forcing some matches to be rescheduled, the Wasps now enter a busy period of fixtures, kicking off with the visit to Annan.

Alloa will then have three back to back home fixtures over the course of a week, against Stirling, a rescheduled Annan and full-time side Cove Rangers.

Graham added that they will take the Falkirk defeat on the chin, but will be looking for a big response in the Borders next week.

“It’s a sore one and the boys will hurt in there,” Graham added. “For all the plaudits they’ve taken over the past six weeks, they fully deserved them.

“They’ll now need to take a bit of criticism this week and it’s how you respond to that. We’ll be going next week to come out the traps in Annan and do something about it.

“It’s down to the players and myself to respond properly and do something about it next week.

“You can’t get carried away with a bad 45 minutes just like you can’t get carried away with a brilliant 45 minutes.

“You’ve always got next week to put it right and that’s what we’ll be doing. The sole focus is to put things right next week."

Alloa visit Annan Athletic next Saturday at 3pm.