OWAIN Fon Williams has confessed Dunfermline’s below-par Boxing Day outing fell well short of the standard required at the Fife club.

But he hopes it sparked the kind of soul-searching that can see them again hit the heights against Inverness this afternoon.

The Pars succumbed to a 3-0 defeat at home to surprise Championship leaders Arbroath on Sunday and remain firmly in a relegation battle in second-bottom spot.

After an initial new manager bounce on the arrival of John Hughes last month, the East End Park men have now lost three of their last four matches.

But Fon Williams is hopeful the visit of old side Inverness, who they beat 2-1 six weeks ago, can bring out the best in the Fifers.

He said: “We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and be accountable for what we do on the football pitch.

“And we need to mirror what we do on the training ground and implement that in the game.

“Boxing Day was not the standard that’s required to play for this football club. It’s not good enough, it’s not where we want to be.

“We are where we are [in the league], purely because of that.

“But if we are to get better we need to work at getting better every single day. It doesn’t just happen.

“It’s all good and well doing it on the training ground, but we’ve got to do it out on the pitch.

“It’s a player's job to look at themselves in the mirror and work on their personal game, and work and work and work and work - the more you work, the luckier you’ll get.

“The rest of the games are going to come thick and fast now. But the message is going to be exactly the same thing - that we need to do it out on the pitch.”

Dunfermline, who have signed former Livingston and Partick Thistle winger Steven Lawless, followed up that Inverness victory on November 13 with a 3-0 victory over Ayr United, but have since lost to Partick, Hamilton and Arbroath and drawn with Queen of the South.

Fon Williams wants players to realise the predicament they are in and spark a turn around themselves.

He added: “We’ve just got to demand it. Sometimes people are waiting for someone to do something, and then you get a momentum from that.

“Whether that’s a tackle or a ball or a run, or a save or a block.

“Sometimes, in my experience, players need something to trigger them to get them going, rather than going, ‘right, you know what, I’m going to be right on it from the get-go here’.”