East Stirlingshire went under at Gayfield on Saturday as Arbroath reinforced their dominance at the top of the table.
The visitors battled bravely but it wasn’t enough as Lichties Aldin El-Zubaidi, Bobby Linn, Kevin Buchan and Simon Murray scored the goals.
Maroon’s manager Allan Moore felt more could be done by his side.
“Maybe our standards are just a bit too high but I felt we were really scrappy at times throughout the game but what we can do is hurt teams when we get into good positions and we’ve got good players up top who can do that,” he said.
East Stirlingshire’s assistant manager George Shaw was understandably disappointed.
He said: “The first half we gave away two sloppy goals. You can’t come to a team that’s top of the league and away from home and give silly goals away like that.”
With the sun in their eyes and Arbroath on aggressive form, the Shire were on the back foot from the off but Lady Luck kept the scoresheet blank until El-Zubaidi found himself on the receiving end of an accurate corner from Adam Hunter and nodded it cleanly past Richard Barnard 20 minutes in.
Linn made it 2-0 13 minutes later when Murray set up a cracker in the box for him to rocket into the top of the net.
The Shire came bounding out of the tunnel after the break but it wasn’t enough to keep Arbroath at bay and, 16 minutes from the end, Buchan tidied up a messy melee in the box to make it 3-0.
Around five minutes later some clever link-up play let Murray kill the game with a point blank strike.