Ray McKinnon: Clyde result could be best thing for Falkirk

Ray McKinnon has insisted Falkirk’s disappointing defeat to Clyde could actually be the best thing to happen to Falkirk going forward.

Falkirk boss Ray McKinnon watches on

The Bairns came up far short of what was required at Broadwood last week as Mark Lamont’s goal separated the two sides with the Bully Wee handing Falkirk their first defeat of the league campaign.

However, ahead of the clash with Airdrieonians on Saturday, McKinnon believes it can actually be a positive for the Bairns in their bid to return to the Scottish Championship.

He told the Falkirk Herald: “There’s a certain way you have got to play to beat these teams.

“You need to be relentless up in the final third, you need to have movement and you need to have energy.

“There’s no point playing on the halfway line, pretty football. It’s maybe a reminder to the players that we need to be more dynamic further up the park.

“Listen, we’re going to use this as a good learning curve for us.

“It’s maybe going to turn out as the best thing for us simply because we need to recognise how we need to play when we come up against this opposition.

“A lot of these players haven’t had to play in this way. [Michael] Tidser, Charlie [Telfer] down at Morton were probably more defensive than offensive in terms of how the game unfolded for 90 minutes – that is probably the case for quite a lot of them.

“It’s a new thing for them to be in control of the game for so much. It’s a different mindset and a different mentality.”

Airdrieonians go into the match on the back of a 4-1 defeat to East Fife previous to that they had won three games on the bounce.

He said: “It’s a good opportunity on Saturday we need to be mindful of how we want to play.

“We want to bounce back and keep this club moving forward.

“There wasn’t an individual on Saturday who let the performance go down – it was a general thing. The whole team were all playing in the same sort of manner so we’ll learn from that.”

“The boys have trained well this week, they worked harder than they have any other week so we’re looking forward to Saturday.”

Falkirk have no fresh injury concerns ahead of the clash with the Diamonds.