JIM Duffy has called on his players to ‘find their attacking adrenaline’ this weekend against Ayr United after failing to find the net in their last two outings.

Ton created little in the way of forward threat last Saturday at Hampden against Queen’s Park, nor did they muster anything of note going forward against Hibs at Easter Road the week before.

But the manager is confident if they show an extra willingness to gamble on the park then it will pay dividends.

Duffy is sure that his team have the ability to create problems for opposition defences and believes they need to be a bit less deliberate and more prepared to take risks in the final third of the park.

He told the Tele: “Last week we didn’t pose enough threat or create enough chances.

“I think we’re trying to be a little bit too careful with some of the play.

“We’ve got to get back to being a little bit more alert and take a few more risks in the final third.

“To do that you’ve got to pull the trigger at times, even if it does go over the bar or by the post — or put a cross in the box, even if it’s not your best cross.

“I think once you get back to taking a few risks then you start to be a bit more creative, and that’s something we’ve tried to emphasise to the players this week, to go and release themselves a bit in those areas.”

“I felt we had done that right up until the Hibs game — even against Dumbarton where we didn’t play at our best we still had so many chances to score.

“And in games previous to that we did well, but just the last couple of games I felt we’ve been a wee bit stale, but we’ve got to find that adrenaline again.”

The Ton boss is keen to stress that he is not instructing his players to adopt a scatter gun approach and take on wildly ambitious attempts on goal, but wants his frontmen to show more of an attacking instinct.

Duffy said: “It’s not necessarily about shoot on sight because if you start doing that then the players become erratic.

“But there needs to be an element of that.

“If you’ve got a chance to shoot, provided you’ve got the ball under control, you have to shoot.

“I think we’ve been a bit too conservative, more so than we’ve had to be.

“Our attacking players need to take that responsibility but I felt that they’ve went into their shell a wee bit for one reason or another.

“We’re trying to say to them ‘it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake or miss a chance, go and do it again’.

“I won’t criticise them for making a mistake, but I will criticise them if they are not prepared to take a chance.”