Dunfermline were the last side to qualify for the last 16 when a late Chris Kane penalty secured a win away to St Mirren on Sunday that sealed progress as one of the three best runners-up at Championship rivals Queen’s Park’s expense.<\/p>\n
Although St Mirren still topped the group on goal difference, the defeat meant they missed out on being seeded in Sunday’s draw. <\/p>\n
Reacting to being drawn away to Rangers, manager Craig McLeish said: “I am disappointed from my point of view that we had a chance to win our group and be one of the seeded sides and the draw has not been good to us.<\/p>\n
“I thought we were denied a goal, but we only have ourselves to blame unfortunately.”<\/p>\n
Dunfermline head coach Neil Lennon was a happier man.<\/p>\n
“I thought we played well in the last half hour and deserved our victory,” he said.<\/p>\n
“A home tie is the most important thing, but Ross County have been phenomenal this season after a hugely disappointing relegation, so we will not be taking anything for granted.”<\/p>\n
Aberdeen, Ayr, Dundee United, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock, County and Stenhousemuir were the other group winners, while Dundee and Partick Thistle progressed as runners-up.<\/p>\n
Celtic, Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Motherwell and Rangers were given byes to the last 16 as they are representing Scotland in European competitions.<\/p>\n
While the Old Firm have been drawn against top-flight opponents, the other three take on Championship sides, with Hearts hosting Caley Thistle, Hibs at home to Partick Thistle and Motherwell away to Stenhousemuir.<\/p>\n
The second-round ties will be played on the weekend of 15-16 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dunfermline were the last side to qualify for the last 16 when a late Chris Kane penalty secured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-785867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}