JIM Duffy has warned his players they should be ready to face a Falkirk backlash after the Bairns were comprehensively beaten by Dundee United on Sunday afternoon.

Paul Hartley’s men were thrashed 3-0 by the Terrors at Tannadice, continuing their poor start to the season. But Duffy believes they will be out to prove they are better than that with a win this weekend.

Ton themselves are off the back of a decent point away to Dunfermline on Tuesday night, but while the manager was pleased with his side’s performance he is certain Falkirk will provide a different sort of opposition from the Pars.

He told the Tele: “When you get a good performance you always want to take things forward but this weekend it’s not as simple as that. 

“It’s different opponents on an artificial surface.

“Falkirk lost comfortably to Dundee United on Sunday and I’m sure that they’ll be looking to rectify that and put it right, so I think it will be a very difficult game. 

“It’ll be another test for us but looking at the fixture list this week there are so many difficult games to call and ours is one of those games.

“We hadn’t played in a couple of weeks as well and with the effort the players put in they’ll probably be feeling it in their legs.

"But we’ll approach the game as we always do, we’ll go there and give it everything we’ve got.

“Falkirk obviously haven’t started the season very well but that can change very quickly. Inverness started poorly and now they’re on a great run, so things can go one way or another.

“Falkirk have very good players and up front have an awful lot of options like Nathan Austin, Lee Miller and Rory Loy. They’ve got plenty of options all over the squad and a very good manager in Paul Hartley.

“He knows how to get out of this division, so I have no doubts their fortunes will turn and they’ll be a force to be reckoned with again in this division. From our point of view we hope that takes a wee bit longer to happen.”

Morton will be without defender Luca Gasparotto tomorrow afternoon as the 22-year-old is on an emergency loan from the Bairns and therefore unable to play against his parent club.

Duffy admits losing the Canadian may force another change in shape after Tuesday night.

He said: “Luca isn’t available this Saturday, so straight away that’s the sort of thing that impacts on our shape. 

“That’s the reason I’ll never assume that if something works one game then it’ll work in another after that.

“Changing the shape was something we tried and the players adapted to it pretty well. It’s definitely given us food for thought for future games but this weekend’s game will be totally different, so we have to approach that with the right team. 

“It won’t be the same team obviously because Luca is out but we’ll wait and see whether we go with the same shape or whether we change, it’ll just depend on the circumstances.”