On Saturday we welcome Morton to Palmerston, for what is unbelievable their third visit to Dumfries so far this season. 

The game marks the start of the second quarter of the campaign and we want this quarter to be more productive than the one just gone.  We ended the first round of fixtures at home to Hibernian last weekend, although relatively happy with the way we played, we have to look at the bigger picture and in doing that, it was a frustrating afternoon. Losing the early goal meant that we never got the chance to get a foothold in the game.

We’ve lost too many “cheap” goals in recent weeks so we’ve been working hard on ways to tighten up the defence and working at defending better as a team.  Once we eradicate those errors, it gives us the opportunity to go and create more in the final third and a chance to turn those chances into goals and wins.

We lost a lot of players over the summer from a team that had been together for a few years.  That was a side that we didn’t have to change much and a side who had an understanding of each other.  It’s all about finding that formula again, it’s difficult to get the consistency when you’re not getting results as your make small changes wither it be in shape or personnel but that’s part of the job and we just need to find that winning formula with the current squad.

As I mentioned at the start, Saturday's match will be the third meeting between us and Morton this season, they’re a team with quality and a side who have been in good spirits since joining the Championship.  But looking at the games we’ve played I don’t think there’s much between the sides and if we can improve a little bit on how we’ve played in the first two games then I believe we have enough within the squad to go and get the win.

Iain Russell is still side-lined for this one.  Dale Hilson and Calum Tapping have both returned to training this week but will probably need a game before they can be included in the squad. Everybody else trained this morning, so if there’s no reaction they will be in the squad for Saturday.