BOB McHugh believes Brechin will be smarting from their midweek mauling at the hands of Inverness — and could shut up shop against Morton this afternoon to avoid a similar scenario.

Darren Dods’ side were battered 4-0 at the Caledonian Stadium on Tuesday night. 

Ex-Falkirk man McHugh reckons the Angus outfit will be desperate to avoid a re-run of that at Cappielow and the striker is sure it will be hard work for Ton to break down the City defence because they will be even more conscious of avoiding another heavy defeat.

He told the Tele: “We don’t want to overlook Brechin because we know, going by the last time, how tough they can be to break down. 

“If you look at that last game we dominated and deserved to win, but it was difficult because they’re well organised.

“It will be tough to break them down because they’re just off the back of a 4-0 loss, so they’ll be wanting to tighten up more at the back and that’ll make it harder for us as well.

“We’d like to get the first goal and hopefully it’ll open up from there but we know how tough it could potentially be to do that.”

Confidence is high in the Morton camp after last week’s results and McHugh admits the players do have a ‘spring in their step’ ahead of this afternoon’s game.

He added: “Off the back of a two-weekend break you can be a bit rusty, but I think we’ve done well over the two games last week.

“We’ve looked refreshed and seem to have sorted out a few wee issues that the manager identified before the break. 

“We’ve taken four points from a possible six in two tough games and hopefully we can take that into today. 

“There is a spring in the boys’ step after last week. 

“We haven’t yet managed to put a run together this season of maybe four or five wins in a row. Hopefully we can put that together in the next few weeks.

“But we need to take care of Brechin first before we look any further.”