Arbroath are aiming to finish the season strongly – starting at Ochilview against an East Stirlingshire side who beat them at Gayfield recently.
After dominating League 2 in the opening half of the season, Allan Moore’s men have won just once in 2015 and have slipped to third place, 11 points behind leaders Albion Rovers.
Assistant manager Todd Lumsden said: “We know that recent results could have been better. If we were receiving a school report it would probably say keep doing what you are doing, minus the small errors you are making, and you will be successful.
“We played well against East Fife last Saturday and thought that things were turning our way when Marc McCallum saved Derek Riordan’s penalty in the first half. We had two great chances but never took them. Then, just before the break, a poor back-pass and a poor touch saw us concede a free kick that East Fife scored from.
“We are not taking our chances and are getting punished for every error just now. However, we need to improve in certain areas as well. The players were told to ensure that their concentration levels remain high in the minutes leading up to half-time and see things out but that did not happen.
“The players get things right more often than not but when they are not getting things right we are getting punished. We lost the second goal as we were chasing the game, so we know that if we had seen the game out until half-time we could well have picked up a point at least.”
The Red Lichties management team are also hoping that their scoring touch returns, as Lumsden explained: “We used to find scoring easy but that has left us just now. It will come back.
“We had a good chat with the players on Monday and Wednesday at training and they firmly believe they are the group that will turn things around for us.
“East Stirling have had the opposite season to us as they started poorly and then picked up some great results. If we had reached our points tally in a similar manner everyone would be saying that we have a good chance of promotion as momentum was with us.
“However, because expectation levels were raised everyone thinks we are having a disappointing season. That is not the case and we will look to get positivity behind us by defeating East Stirling.
“The last time we played them sums up our recent form as we had 18 shots and failed to score and they had one and found the net with it. It is time to turn that around.”
Craig Stewart
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