'They are showing us a back-handed compliment' - Falkirk boss John McGlynn gives opposition analysis after another bore draw

The boss however did admit his players can ‘play way above’ the levels they are reaching at the moment as the Bairns look to arrest their worrying form ahead of the final run-in to the League One campaign.

That point against Jim Duffy’s ninth-placed outfit allowed Airdrie to move to within four points of Falkirk having played a game more, while leaders Dunfermline are still eleven points clear – and can all but win the title next weekend when they take on the Bairns.

"It was a bit like last Friday to be fair,” McGlynn told the Falkirk Herald. “It was similar, we couldn’t get someone on the end of the that final ball and we couldn’t get the ball in the back of the net. We had so much of the ball.

“We are coming up against teams who have ten men behind the ball and they are sitting very deep. It is difficult to break them down and unfortunately that is how it panned out for us.

“Teams are setting up to make it difficult for us and they are achieving that. We are playing into their hands by making heavy weather of it. Our players are better than what they are producing right now. We are huffing and puffing.

“Teams are quite happy to take a point. It is a back-handed compliment to ourselves – teams feel like they need to do that in order to not concede. Yeah it is frustrating. We are much better than that (the performance) and in the first half, we had too many stray passes and it meant we couldn’t build in attack.

“Callumn Morrison got in behind a couple of times but we didn’t take any of the little moments that did come our way, and they are so important. That was similar to last week too.”

Ahead of that derby clash against the Pars this Saturday at home, McGlynn says his side’s recent winless league run won't have any barring on how the ninety minutes pan out.

“The game in itself stands out,” he said. “The individual game is massive, whether it is the first or fourth meeting between the teams this season. You want to produce your best. The event will take care of itself. We need to dust ourselves down and in these past two matches, we haven’t lost them, we haven’t looked like conceding a goal really.”

Analysis & opposition view – are teams really changing their style just for Falkirk?

It would easy to put John McGlynn’s post-match assessment of the 0-0 draw down as a classic case of ‘sour grapes’ after a poor result – but Clyde boss Jim Duffy’s post-match comments would suggest that he is in fact correct, and that is it something Falkirk will simply need to learn to deal with in their final six outings of the League One campaign.

After a stunning mid-campaign run, it at one point looked almost inevitable that the Bairns would catch-up with the Pars at the top of the table, but any sort of title challenge has totally faded over the previous month.

Now it is a case of making sure that second spot is secured for the best possible chance of going up via the play-offs, with the added factor that a Scottish Cup final may also be on the horizon during that heavy end-of-season period.

“We changed our style a little bit today and we dropped off Falkirk to counter attack them,” Duffy explained to the Falkirk Herald. “For large parts of the game that worked for us.

"You have to be very disciplined when you play that sort of system and we did. When they play the ball around the back, the fans get on your back and you feel like you need to press.

“But when they have the likes of Aidan Nesbitt, Gary Oliver and Craig McGuffie – you need to nullify that space because they are so dangerous and they can cut you open with real ease.

“They are a very good team and they are going to have chances but we restricted them to not too many at all, and when they did get in, we had some fantastic blocks to deny them.

“Overall for us, it was a very good point against a terrific side.”