Aitken: ‘We must improve quickly for Hibs’

Mark McGuigan’s strike late on was enough to seal Brian Reid’s side a place in the next round, but the visitors looked blunt in attack.

The Sons boss said his team had not done enough to win it, and his players will need to improve quickly when they host the title favourites this week.

And Aitken said the fans were owed a performance similar to their efforts last year – where they took six points off the Edinburgh side, after their display against the Blues.

He said: “My opinion is they deserved to win the game, they wanted it more than my players did, it was disappointing “I feel sorry for the supporters that came down on the long journey because the team weren’t at it today for whatever reason that was, it wasn’t like them, and when you do that you lose games of football so the credit today goes to Stranraer, we wish them well in the next round and we have to pick ourselves up for Hibs next week,” he added.

“It’s a huge game, it’s a team that will probably win the league looking at the start they’ve had but we’ve always done well against those teams, we took six points off them last year and we’re ready to take points off them this year.

“We’ll need to pick ourselves up again, the players let themselves and the club down and the supporters especially as they’ve come a long way and backed them and if they put in a performance like that for them then they owe them one back.”

Aitken moved to try to find a goal by making attacking changes early on, but his side did not improve enough to get the winner.

And it was former Son Christian Nade who came off the bench for the home side and had the biggest impact, his effort was parried away by Alan Martin, only to fall at the feet of McGuigan to fire into the net.

Aitken added: "I think Stranraer did enough to win the game and I’m not going to stand here and say anything differently.”