Ayr United defender George Stanger insists Honest Men have squad strength to cope with injury problems

The centre half reckons Ayr are proving they have the depth in numbers to cope with their early selection problems.

GEORGE Stanger insists Ayr have the squad to cope with their early season injury crisis.

A string of United stars have been crocked in the opening weeks of the campaign. But Scott Brown’s side have managed to roll with the punches and maintained their unbeaten run at Hampden on Saturday.

Skipper Ben Dempsey’s second half strike earned a hard fought point to put Ayr back on top of the Championship pile. And centre back Stanger says that proves they have the character to come through their early test.

He said: “Injuries are going to happen in football. We are unfortunate, especially at this stage of the season. We’ve lost a few bodies and good players at that. But we’ve got good players all around the squad.

“The boys who’ve come in have done well. Obviously it’s disappointing for those who are injured and you feel for the lads. But you’ve got to move on from it.

“They’re all doing their rehab to try and get back. We will try and stay positive about that. It’s bad luck, sometimes you get unlucky in football. Hopefully we’ll start to get a few more bodies back soon.”

Ayr began sluggishly at the national stadium but hauled themselves level to earn their point. And Stanger admits standards before half time were well below par.

He added: “We need to have a wee look at ourselves in terms of that’s a few games now where we’ve not been good enough in the first half, we’ve not started well. We can’t do that every week to get to where we want to get to.

“We must be at it for 90 minutes which I think we have been previously this season. But in the last couple of weeks we’ve let ourselves down in that first half. We need to put that right and make sure next week it doesn’t happen again.”

Stanger also played with his third goalkeeper in as many weeks as Liam Russell made his debut between the sticks. But the defender insists it’s healthy to have competition within the squad.

He said: “Working with all the goalies in training every day, you get used to them. You build good relationships through that. They’ve done well, I think it’s good for them to have that competition and to push each other on.

“The back four and everyone in the team just do everything we can to help the goalies and hopefully they don’t have to do much during the game. But when they do, they’re good. It’s nice to play with different players. They’re all good.”

And he added: “I think it shows our mentality now that, in the last few weeks, we’ve not been happy with draws. A point is not horrendous, Queen’s Park are a really good team that will take lots of points off others this season.

“But we want to win games and that’s why there was disappointment in the changing room.”

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