Weekend break and a rare day off for Stenhousemuir players

Innes Murray has joined Stenhousemuir on loan from Hibernian

The Warriors did have a behind closed doors bounce game with Arbroath on Tuesday and will train tonight (Thursday) - but rather than arrange an additional training session boss Brown Ferguson has give his players a rare Saturday off.

He said: “We used the bounce game to give some of the players who have not been getting 90 minutes, or coming back from injury, some game time.

“On Thursday night we’ll work on some of the stuff we want to build on for next week and they will get Saturday to spend a bit of time with their families.

“We’d obviously much rather be playing in the cup. But there’s a few lads who have got new born kids and these opportunities are few and far between over the course of a season.”

Saturday’s draw with Clyde leaves Stenhousemuir sixth in the table after their opening four League 2 matches.

And while Ferguson would like to have seen points on the board he is encouraged by the way his new-look side is developing.

He said: “The performances have been good.

“We should have more points and that’s probably been the frustration. Against Stirling Albion, Montrose and Clyde we found ourselves ahead and only picked up two points.

“But I’ve seen progression in the way we ‘re trying to play, I’ve seen the team knitting and gelling together.

“There’s only three players in the squad who were with us last season and on Saturday there was only one player from last year starting the match.

“So it’s a very new team and I’m pretty sure we’ll get stronger as we progress through the course of the season.

Ferguson added to his squad last week when he drafted in 19-year-old former Celtic midfielder Innes Murray on a development loan from Hibernian.

And he said that any further additions to his squad are also likely to be development loan deals, probably from Championship sides.

He said: “We’re talking to a couple of clubs about a couple of younger players coming out to bulk up our squad and make sure we’ve got the appropriate cover.

“We hope the opportunity presents itself for these players to perform well at this level so that they can then go on and perform well for their parent clubs.”