CAPTAIN Ben Dempsey admitted his team 'lost the battle' against Raith Rovers on Friday night and "can't let that happen again" after Ayr United fell to their third defeat in their last four Championship matches.

The Honest Men lost further ground on league leaders Falkirk - and also missed the chance to leapfrog second-placed Livingston - as a "really poor performance" led to a comfortable 2-0 win for the hosts.

The game, shown live on BBC Scotland, started evenly but the Kirkcaldy side netted the opener after 20 minutes through on-loan Lewis Jamieson, after Ayr keeper Liam Russell could only palm a Dylan Easton volley into the path of the striker who finished from close range.

And Jamieson bagged his brace shortly before the break following a well-worked move down the left, with Lewis Stevenson pinging a perfect ball across the box for the St Mirren loanee to put away at the back post.

A disappointed Dempsey told Ayr United's media team after the match: "[It was] a really poor performance, they were the better team and dominated us, we were second to everything.

"We made it easy for them, we didn't create enough chances, everything was in front of them.

"We were just playing short stuff, didn't turn them enough, didn't create enough, it was just really disappointing."

READ MORE: Watret wonder strike gets Ayr back to winning ways against Airdrie

Despite two changes at half time, Ayr never looked like getting back on level terms, and Scott Brown's side now sit five points adrift of Falkirk - who hammered Morton 6-0 on Saturday - having played a game more.

Dempsey added: "We weren't doing the basics that we started at the start of the season and we were just off the pace of it. Not playing forward, fast, attractive football.

"They won the battle and you could see that on the pitch.

"We have to react now from this because that was a really poor performance and wasn't good enough.

"We have to make sure with the next games coming that we can't let that happen again because we let the fans down, we let ourselves down, we let the staff down."

(Image: Gary Bradley) Manager Brown was furious that a seemingly legitimate Mark McKenzie goal from a corner was disallowed by referee Lloyd Wilson for an apparent foul with the game still at 1-0, however, he conceded that his starting XI also impacted the result.

He said: "I think when we look back at it we got the team wrong. We played a team to try and bully them physically but also have quality on the ball and energy, and we had none of that.

"We were slow on the ball, we didn't get our press right, we were disjointed, we were a team of individuals today. If I'm honest it's probably not the best performance I've ever seen.

"There was no desire to pass forward to take that little bit of risk, or that bit of quality in the final third that we've usually got.

"We had Jay [Henderson], Marco [Rus] and Frankie [Musonda] on the bench but obviously their quality has been adding a lot to us and I've got to take that one on [my] head."

Brown added: "Change of personnel is the biggest thing in the coming weeks to get energy back into the squad.

"You give people opportunities to keep their jersey and they don't do that, so we need to make changes and make sure that training is spot on as well.

"We don't want to keep chopping and changing the team and the squad but after that we maybe need to look at individuals and also everyone together."

Ayr face another Friday night fixture, this time against Morton at Cappielow on November 8, with the match again to be shown live on BBC Scotland. Kick off is at 7.45pm.