Elgin City manager Allan Hale plans to analyse Spartans defeat and get Borough Briggs men back to winning ways against Forfar Athletic
The manager may look to use his full squad when bodies return to the fold.
Elgin City boss Allan Hale may even freshen up his starting line-up for today’s League 2 clash at home to Forfar Athletic.
Hale saw his team’s six-game unbeaten run halted by a 3-2 home loss to Spartans last week, a result he said was a fair one.
And he pinpointed tiredness in his ranks, with two players who have been strong in his midfield department showing signs of wear and tear after a busy period of action.
“We’ll look to bounce back,” Hale said. “Typically we've always responded when we've had an indifferent performance.
“Our form has been good so that gives us encouragement. I think we've played some good teams and we've more than matched them.”
The Borough Briggs boss felt Spartans were just too good for his team last Saturday and says he will look into the reasons why.
“We'll get into training and go again. We've been much more structured and solid (in games prior to the Spartans defeat) and I think there's reasons for that.
“Miko (Virtanen) and Ally (Spalding) in particular, I thought they looked really tired and sluggish today.
“We knew Spartans were probably statistically the best team picking up second balls in the league this season. I think that showed today.
“It's just things that you can't really fix in game as such. You can only reference it.
“There's no need to get all doom and gloom when you lose games. We've got to be analytical, we've got to review where it went wrong, put that information into players, do it on the training pitch and then next week will be a tough game.
“Forfar have got a lot of experience in their team, the same way that Spartans have got a lot of physicality in their team.
“They'll play with a lot of aggression, they'll ask questions of us so we've got to be ready for that.
“I think we lacked that wee bit of physicality and presence (against Spartans).”