Blantyre Vics boss John Gibson hopes for a morale-boosting win over Linlithgow Rose on Saturday, but says his side will be down to the bare bones for the South Challenge Cup fourth round clash.
Vics are struggling in second-bottom place in the West of Scotland Premier Division, 12 points behind Kilbirnie Ladeside, with seven clubs bowing out during the summer restructure.
Gibson admits they’re finding their way to goal troublesome, but still says they were unlucky to lose 2-0 against Troon on Saturday.
With Aaron Black back at Darvel following his loan spell, and several injuries to contend with, Gibson concedes that Vics are up against it.
He said: “We’ve got 15 games and it’s difficult to turn it around because we’re struggling to score goals.
“We’re maybe creating one or two chances but we need to start taking them, get a wee bit of confidence.
“I believe we can still win some games, definitely, and that’s the goal.
“We have a cup tie at Linlithgow this Saturday and we’re going to be missing a few bodies, so we’re going to be down to the bare bones, but we just need to patch things up, and try to do as well as we can.
“Dale Jones was sent off on Saturday, Aaron Black’s away back to Darvel, and we picked up injuries on Saturday.
“We have a knee injury to Lewis Warnock, hamstring with Fraser Allan, so we are down.
“We’ll probably use a couple of under-20s to see us through the game unless I can get something in. I’m trying to get something in this week, and we’ll see where we go from there.”
Gibson lost Jones to a red card and then Allan’s hamstring went in the first 15 minutes of Saturday’s defeat.
Even with that, Gibson felt his side worked hard and were unfortunate not to draw.
He said: “We did really well in the first half with 10 men, contained them a wee bit, matched them in every way and the boys were excellent.
“I thought we should have got a penalty, but they never go for you, and at the start of the second half we had a wee chance to go 1-0 up, Aaron Black forced a good save. But they’ve then scored with a good move, the boy has struck it really well.
“We’ve got to take the positives out of that – 11 v 11 we might have given them a game, but it was bad decision-making for the player to get sent off.
“The referee said Dale stamped on the guy, and that was disappointing, especially when you’re down there – we’re struggling to beat teams with 11 men, never mind 10.”
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