We can’t take our eye off the ball, insists Falkirk boss John McGlynn after Pars win

The Bairns beat rivals Dunfermline Athletic 1-0 on Saturday at home to extend their lead at summit with just eight games remaining after Ayr United lost at Greenock Morton.

“We’ve just got to focus on ourselves,” McGlynn said. “That’s the message. It’s a bonus (Ayr losing), of course it is - I’m not going to be stupid about it.

“But we can’t take our eye off the ball. We keep our feet on the ground and don’t get carried away because loads of things can happen yet.

“We move on to next week and Queen’s Park who’ve been going along well.”

Brad Spencer’s sixth-minute strike sealed what was a comfortable victory – and McGlynn was impressed with the midfielder’s cultured finish.

He said: “It’s a great goal by Brad, it was well worked. A bit Scotty Arfield-esque finish - he did that in his first game for us.

“He passed the ball in the corner. I’ve been trying to get Brad to do that for about two and a half seasons now! Thankfully he’s learned from Scotty.”

On the performance, the boss added: “We are delighted to come out on top in a big derby game.

"We were in command, we just couldn’t get anyone on the end of another opportunity where it mattered.

“We had crosses in the box but no one on the end. But we did everything we could to make it more comfortable towards the end.

“Although Nicky (Hogarth) hasn’t had a save to make, anything can happen at 1-0.

“We’ve had three cleans sheets out of four. If I go back five, six games ago we were losing two goals a game.

“The whole team is defending a lot better. The clean sheets are massive. The whole team is contributing to that, working so hard.

“We said to Nicky a few games ago to get eight clean sheets out of 12 four games ago.

“We mentioned that Harry Stone got eight out of 12 for Ayr. Nicky has the most clean sheets so as far as that’s concerned it’s so far so good.”