Falkirk boss John McGlynn provides squad as Brad Spencer may make bench for Bairns against Dundee

Falkirk manager John McGlynn has revealed that ever-present midfielder Brad Spencer may only make the bench for tonight’s Scottish Premiership match against Dundee.

The Bairns boss did have some good news however with centre-back Liam Henderson fit again after missing the 2-0 extra-time win over Stenhousemuir last weekend in the Scottish Gas Scottish Cup.

Spencer, 29, has so far started every competitive match for the Bairns this campaign having previously not missed a minute of league football during the second-tier title success. Tonight is likely to be the first game he hasn’t started in the top fight for Falkirk this term and he’s managed to string together 67 successive starts for McGlynn’s side.

Spencer and Wilson may miss out

Assessing his squad before the visit of Dundee in what has been a hectic schedule, the boss confirmed that he will freshen up his team: “It looks like Liam Henderson will be available. He missed out the Scottish Cup tie with a calf injury. The plan was to leave him for another few days and it would be OK and that seems to be the case, so he’ll be back available. Brad’s a similar situation as to what Liam was. We could wrap him up and get him on the pitch but it’s not going to do him any good, he’s picked up a little nick on his ankle.

“So he may make the bench, Brad. He’s been available virtually all season. We will freshen things up a little bit because we’re continuously taking a lot of the same players to the well, we’ve played a lot of games and the extra 30 minutes the other night there didn’t really help us at all. We’ve got 24 hours less recovery than Dundee, they played in the Saturday. It looks like Kyrell Wilson is going to miss out with a calf injury, which is a bit of a blow because he’s been doing well and he did well when he came on against Stenhousemuir.”

McGlynn admits that Spencer will be a big miss with the midfielder being a key part of how the Bairns’ go about their business. He says however that it is an opportunity for the likes of Leicester City loanee Henry Cartwright.

“We will miss him, there’s no doubt about that,” McGlynn said. “But somebody else can bring something else to the table. And that’s what we’ve got that’s what we need to have. We’ve got a strong squad ourselves and I’ve got loads of belief in the players that will take the field Wednesday night. But it will be odd with Brad because Coll’s been out injured so Brad’s been the captain and he’s been brilliant. He had to lead by example the other night there to get the goal, he took the responsibility to go and have a shot which opened the deadlock and got us into the quarter-finals. It will be interesting to see how we can go and play without him.”

Sixth-placed Falkirk sit on 36 points, eight above Aberdeen in seventh and a whopping 19 points ahead of Kilmarnock in eleventh. A win against Dundee would take the Bairns onto 39 points - and looking back on previous campaigns, that would all-but mean that McGlynn’s side will be in the Premiership next season even if they did fall apart (which simply isn’t going to happen anyway).

“I think we’d be very close with that, 39 points would be very close,” McGlynn admitted. “We have two home games coming up against both Dundee teams. We would like to get that marker that we set, that 40-point mark, as quickly as we can. We’ve got to pay enormous credit to Steven Pressley and Dundee, they were brilliant at the weekend against Celtic. It looks like he’s got them just getting better and better and they were excellent at the weekend. So we know we’re in for a game. They are very well organised. Once they got a goal up against Celtic, Celtic found it really difficult to open them up. They’re organised defensively as you would expect but they certainly got a threat. The two wingers are really really good. And between Simon Murray, Scott Wright now, they’ve got some threat with their strikers as well. They’re a good side and we’ll need to be our best.”