GARY Oliver has been one of the stand-out performers for Morton this season but the striker admits his game has suffered for the past few weeks.

With the play-offs within reach, Ton are crawling towards a top four spot having not won any of their previous five games. 

Oliver says he’s been having a hard time trying to play his brand of football due to the frenetic pace of Championship games in the final quarter of the season.

The 21-year-old has enjoyed a successful season so far, but with clubs above and below the Ton fighting for their lives, action on the pitch has become more frantic, with teams often settling for long balls and pressing tactics. 

And Oliver reckons this has stifled his talents.

He told the Tele: “It’s this time in the season, everyone is fighting for their lives and we’re trying to push on in the play-offs.

"Every game is probably going to be quite scrappy from now on with everybody trying to get points on the board. We’re not playing as good football as we were playing earlier in the season for whatever reason but, like I said, it’s probably going to be like that with people fighting for survival.

“We need to try and work our way around that. It works against my game because I’m not getting on the ball as much as I’d like to and we’re not passing it as well as we were, we need to get it working again.

“You practice all week with the gaffer sometimes introducing new rules in our drills like you can’t play the ball above head height. 

“Then it comes to a Saturday and it’s all played up in the air, which is totally against my game and a lot of the other boys as well. We’ve got good football players in our team.

“So things like that aren’t ideal, and Tuesday night certainly wasn’t great.”

Oliver still insists his side are desperate to put Tuesday night’s horror show to rest with an improved result against Raith Rovers this afternoon. 

And he’s looking to get back on the scoresheet for the Greenock men, having not netted since back in January against Ayr United.

He added: “The boys are all looking forward to this afternoon to try and make things right and get back to winning ways.

"Tuesday was a kick, it wasn’t great obviously and we weren’t our usual selves.

“Raith will be as difficult as the St Mirren game. They’re in the bottom two so it’ll be hard. I’m dying to get back on the score sheet as well, it’s been a wee bump in the road the last few months so I need to get my head down and work hard, hopefully they’ll come.

“It happens in football. You don’t go through a full season without a slip-up here and there, if we did we’d be in the top league.

"So we need to stick together as a team, which is what we’ve done all season and work away at it.”