DUMBARTON are down in the Championship play-off spot after losing 2-0 at home to Dunfermline on Saturday, but manager Stevie Aitken is still confident they can climb to safety. Although his team have a tough run-in, with visits to Palmerston Park and Tannadice before they meet Falkirk at home in the final game, the Sons boss is taking heart from their improved away form - and from the quality of their performance against the fifth-placed Pars.

“It’s 36 games that concerns me, not 33,” he said. “Certainly the players are in a good place. We’ve picked up a lot of good points recently. We’ve got three games to go, but other teams have got three games to go as well, so there’ll be twists and turns yet.

“But what we have shown this year is we’re very competitive. We’ve improved on last year. Last year was great, but we’ve got more points, and more wins away from home.

“We’ve got two tough away games coming up now, but as I said, we’ve improved our away form. Then there’s the final game at home to Falkirk. They’re all tough games.

“We’ll bounce back. There’s no doubt about that.”

Two goals in the last 10 minutes gave Dunfermline all three points, with Rhys McCabe opening the scoring before David Hopkirk got the second five minutes from time. But Dumbarton had their chances before that, notably one in the first half for Gregor Buchanan, and Aitken argued that on another day his team could have taken something from the match.

“There wasn’t a lot in the game. The two teams had really good chances - we had a terrific chance in the first half when Gregor probably should have scored. We had another chance he never took, and when Dunfermline got their chances they took them.”