Stevie Aitken wants to repay Dumbarton’s home supporters after his team let them down with their performance against Ayr United the last time they played at the Cheaper Insurance Direct Stadium.

An off-colour Sons side went down by three goals to nil to The Honest Men a fortnight ago, but they reacted to that set-back by going down bravely to Dundee United at Tannadice last week.

Aitken is hoping that they can carry that improvement into tomorrow’s crucial showdown with Dunfermline, who currently sit one point ahead of Dumbarton in the standings.

“The players all want to give something back to the supporters after that Ayr United game,” Aitken said.

“Generally we’ve been very strong at home with a lot of good performances and we’ve had a lot of good results, but we made individual mistakes and the performance wasn’t at the level our supporters are used to seeing.

“Certainly the ones who made it to Tannadice last week saw a huge improvement, and we want to try to carry that on into this week.

“When you’re away to Dundee United, a team with six times your budget, people don’t really expect you to get a result and it’s very difficult.

“The performance was terrific though. I’ve watched United take three off Partick Thistle who are a Premiership side, so I think that plenty of plaudits and praise must go to the players.

“Of course we’re still disappointed to lose, but these things can happen in football and on another day we could have got something from it.

“We came up against an inspired goalkeeper in Cammy Bell and ultimately that was the difference on the day.

“We left with our heads held high and a lot of people were saying that we matched them very well.

“They are a huge, huge club and we went there and gave a really good account of ourselves, and hopefully that will stand the players in good stead going into the game on Saturday.”

A victory for Aitken’s men tomorrow would see them leapfrog the Pars into eighth place, and potentially open up a decent gap to bottom side St Mirren.

Aitken is trying not to concern himself too much with where his side are in the standings at the moment though, preferring to look at the bigger picture.

“We don’t look too much at the table at this stage, there’s a long way to go and we’ll see where we are after 36 games,” he said.

“We want to try and improve our league position and improve upon our last performance at home where we let ourselves down against Ayr United.

“We want to put a good, strong performance in, and every time we’ve done that this year we’ve been very competitive.

“Hopefully we can get a wee break that the players deserve.

“We want to win as many points as we can and get into a better position than we are at the minute of course, but there’s still a long way to go.

“There are big clubs round about us and then there’s a wee gap to Morton, so we want to try to bridge that gap a bit.

“The Ayr United game was the only disappointing performance recently, performance levels have been pretty good, and hopefully we can get back to that on Saturday."