ARTHURLIE boss Duncan Sinclair admits his side need to toughen up after they slumped to a 4-0 home loss to Whitletts Victoria - their second league defeat in three days. 

The one-sided scoreline far from flattered the visitors with Arthurlie never getting going and rarely threatening the Ayrshire side.

Lie fell behind after just 10 minutes when they failed to clear a long ball with Graeme Barbour quickest to react to hit home against his former club.

The home side did have a fair amount of possession in the first-half, but they lacked any cutting edge up front with Del McNab’s wide free-kick their best effort in a lacklustre 45 minutes.

Vics doubled their lead right on the stroke of half-time when Calum Ogston picked out Adam Forsyth and the ex-Troon and Cumnock man coolly slotted past Stephen McPhee.

It was the Ayrshire club who looked most likely after the restart too as they searched for their first points of the season, but the Lie defence held on before launching an attack of their own, with Lee Roulston firing wide and Jamie Docherty’s header flashing narrowly past the post.

Vics captain Raymond Buchanan headed home from close range for their third before Forsyth again kept his cool to lob the ball over the advancing keeper for Whitletts fourth of the afternoon.

Arthurlie got off to a flier in their opening match last week, but have struggled since, shipping six goals while scoring none and Sinclair confessed his players will need to learn on the job.

“We were bullied by a big, strong physical team,” he said. “They really outmuscled us if I’m being honest. We done well getting the ball down and trying to play - only one team tried to play football and that was Arthurlie. 

“I think they’ve got three guys 6’5ft and above, but at the end of the day if you make mistakes you’ll be punished and three of their goals came from individual errors from ourselves and that killed us. 

“We need to learn quickly from these type of games because teams will come here and try get in about us.That’s what happened on Saturday and we couldn’t match it. 

“We’ve been against two teams who have been more physical than us and a bit more direct so we need to look at our own group now and see if we can bring people in to negate that and be a bit more physical ourselves.”

Sinclair undertook a massive rebuilding job at the Dunterlie club when he took over the hotseat earlier this summer and the former Larkhall Thistle gaffer admits the club is still in the process of rebuilding despite being three games into their West Championship campaign.

He said: “We’ve brought in Craig Malloy from Cambuslang who will hopefully give us more experience and that extra bit of dig we need in the middle of the park. We are still trying to strengthen as well. We still need another one or two players to bolster us and give us more options on the park. 

“What we need to remember, though, is that we’ve came from nothing. We’re still bringing in some players and we’re still learning to play together as a team.”