Dumbarton manager Stevie Aitken held his hands up after his side went down to Morton at Cappielow on Saturday, admitting the better side won on the day.

Dumbarton’s fine run of form over the last few weeks was brought to an abrupt end by Morton’s 2-0 victory, and although there wasn’t a great deal between the sides, Aitken conceded that Jim Duffy’s men had the edge.

He has challenged his players to get over their disappointment quickly though, with a massive week coming up for the Sons.

He said: “I don’t think we deserved anything overall, we didn’t play as well as we have been playing recently.

“I can’t be too critical of the players, they’ve been great, it was just one of those games when we never got going at all from the start.

“Morton just edged it on the day, deserved their win, and we just have to pick ourselves up and move on.

“There wasn’t a great deal in the game and neither goalkeeper had too much to do - and certainly the Morton goalkeeper didn’t.

“It was a disappointing result, but we need to put it behind us.

“It was a scrappy game, and losing a couple of players to injury early on didn’t help our cause.

“We lost Christian Nade after about half an hour and Garry Fleming soon after, and that threw us off our stride.

“It was difficult and when we were just getting over the first injury we got the second one, so it was stop-start for us, but I can’t fault the player’s effort.

“At 1-0 they rallied and had a couple of half-chances and probably should have scored to equalise, before Morton caught us on the break late on to seal it.

“We should have been more clinical, but we had a makeshift strikeforce with a midfielder playing up there with a young kid who is just learning the game.

“Over the piece though we didn’t deserve anything really, but those injuries did cause most of our problems.

“We’ve got a great game this week against St Mirren who are just above us in the league, so we’ll work hard this week and look forward to it.”

Dumbarton have a 100% record against the Buddies this season with two wins out of two in the league, but Aitken is expecting a sterner test from them on this occasion under new manager Alex Rae.

“Alex has come in and changed things about, and he’s certainly recruited well bringing in a lot of experienced players,” he said.

“They’ve had a couple of good results, although they would have been disappointed in the Queen of the South result at the weekend.

“We’ve beaten St Mirren twice this season and matched up to them really well. There’s no doubt they’ve improved though, so we’ll have to be at our very best to get anything.

“It will be a tough one away from home, but we’ll be preparing well this week and hopefully we can got to St Mirren Park and put a decent performance in again.

“It shows you how competitive the league is when you look at how St Mirren have struggled, and no one probably thought that Alloa and Livingston would take points off the top two at the weekend either.”