ROSS County midfielder Iain Vigurs has argued the new SPFL five substitution rule gives big Premiership clubs Celtic and Rangers a major advantage over their smaller opponents.
Neil Lennon threw on Ryan Christie, Mohamed Elyounoussi, Patryk Klimala, Ismaila Soro and David Turnbull in the second-half at the Global Energy Stadium on Saturday.
The Parkhead club, who have two games in hand, romped to an emphatic 5-0 win to stay within six points of their Ibrox rivals at the top of the league table.
SPFL clubs voted in favour of a temporary rules alteration, which means clubs can list nine players on the bench on match days, back in July due to the congested fixture list.
“It’s always difficult to play against them,” said Vigurs. “They have a massive squad and a massive budget. It’s night and day between us.
“The new rule obviously favours the wealthier clubs with the bigger squads.
“But we have five subs too and it’s the rules - we can’t do much about it if that’s what was put in place.”
Vigurs feels that County only have themselves to blame for their weekend defeat and admitted Stuart Kettlewell’s men have to be more clinical in attack and solid at the back in future to avoid further defeats.
“Playing Celtic is hard from the first minute and for me we didn’t help ourselves by not taking chances and giving away goals,” he said. It was a frustrating day because we had good chances and didn’t take them.
“This has happened a few times, where we have created against them but still ended up on the end of three, four and now five-nil defeats.
“When you play Celtic you have to take whatever you create and in the first half especially we should have had a goal or two.
“We hit the post a couple of times, the keeper has made a great save from Ross Stewart and we had a few more.
“But we didn’t have that killer instinct in front of goal - and we paid the price of that.”
Vigurs continued: “It didn’t help us that we gifted them goals and I think that’s how best to describe them because they were gifts. We were sloppy and I have to hold my hand up for the fifth one too.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s 0-0 or 4-0, you can’t get sloppy like that because every one counts. So we know we have to eradicate the sloppiness.
“In spells we played some good stuff and dominated the ball for long spells against a very good Celtic side.
“But we didn’t take our chances - and they punished us by taking theirs. We have to keep making those chances and believing that we’ll score goals.
“We will keep playing the way we are, if we can do that and eradicate the sloppiness at the back then we’ll pick up good results.”
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