Stevie Farrell has challenged his struggling Sons to take the lead in this weekend’s clash with Arbroath, after watching them fall behind in seven of their nine outings so far.
The newly promoted Sons remain winless in League One this season, despite a string of encouraging performances earlier in the campaign.
However they have taken the lead in just two matches all season – a 3-3 draw with Alloa Athletic in August and a 1-1 with Annan Athletic at Galabank, where they lost goalkeeper Brett Long to a red card after just 19 minutes and played they remainder of the game with 16-year-old Luke Southwood between the posts.
And Faz says his side have worked on being harder to break down during the international break, ahead of this Saturday’s trip to face a resurgent Arbroath.
He said: “I think we needed to get back on the training pitch. We needed to find a solution. We need to be hard and resolute to beat.
“We’ve got to get that right heading to Arbroath.
“If we can go ahead in a game then I’d like to see us. That’s the challenge I’ve given the players going to Arbroath.
“Can we take the lead? And if we do then I think we’ll be a different animal.
“We showed the players the stats before the Stenhousemuir game. They are phenomenal. In almost every stat we’re top; shots, entries into the opposition box, crosses. Everything.
“It’s okay going that way, but we’ve got to get better defensively. At the moment every single that’s falling is going against us.”
Cammy Clark’s second booking against Stenhousemuir earlier this month was Sons’ fourth already this season, with Farrell admitting that his side are still adapting to the step up in standard from the fourth tier.
“This league is not the league that we’ve come from. It’s unforgiving,” he said.
“There has been a lot of good football in the first quarter. But points wise it’s not good enough. And there’s a lot that we have to improve on.
“We should’ve had more points than we did after the first six games, and there’s still an angst from that.
“I’ve been here before as a manager where you aren’t winning games of football and are going through a sticky spell.
“The reality is that will end. But it ends through hard work and sticking together.
“We’ve got a good group who work hard. They’ve given us everything in every game we’ve played.
“We’ve got to get back on the training pitch. We had a friendly on Thursday night where we were able to look at a couple of things.
“But first and foremost we need to make sure that we’re hard to beat. Because just now we’re not.
“Forget what we’re doing at the top end of the pitch. We need to give ourselves a chance in games, and just now we’re chasing every game.”
Kick off at Gayfield is 3pm.