ANTON McElhone is confident Morton will come good despite suffering their third defeat in a row.

Faissal El Bakhtaoui’s 17th-minute strike, far left, proved to be the difference between the sides at Palmerston as Queen of the South secured their first league win of the season.

The assistant says Ton have still to hit top gear with new signings getting up to speed, but he believes they will go on to have a successful season.

He told the Tele: “It’s a new team. You’ve got the likes of Stephen Welsh, Jack Baird, Luca Colville and Danny Rogers all coming in after pre-season has finished, so they’re a few weeks behind everyone else.

“We need to look at where we will be at the end of the season, not just now.

“Hopefully we can play more away games and get something out of them, at worst we should’ve had a point on Saturday. We finished the game quite strongly; a defeat is hard to take and if we’d have come away with a point, we’d have been very

happy.

“We’ve got to look at the positives; we’re on track and doing the right stuff but we move on.”

The Ton huffed and puffed in search for an equaliser against Queens.

They came very close from a Nicky Cadden free-kick which was brilliantly parried away by ex-Ton loanee Robby McCrorie.

McElhone said: “Nicky was very unlucky, Queens have obviously done their homework and seen his other one against Partick go into the top corner.

“We get it some days and others we don’t.

“We were at least deserving of a point but fair play to them, they played and defended well.

“On another day we score at least one of those chances, we score threes, fours and fives.

“We aren’t going to do that every week because teams will come and defend against us, but we’ve got to take our chances on away days like this.

“We’re a young team and we’ll learn.

“There are plenty of positives to take from the game, Queens have very experienced players despite having a younger squad.”

McElhone admits it was difficult not having manager David Hopkin on the touchline as he served the first of his three-game ban, but he was delighted with the effort that the players showed without their ‘leader’ being present.

He said: “Not having David on the touchline was a huge loss for us, he’s a passionate man, a knowledgeable coach and most importantly – he’s a winner.

“It’s tough not to have your leader out on the pitch, but the guys as a group stuck by myself and Timmo [Dave Timmins] and tried everything they could.

“It’s not as if it was a disappointing performance for David to watch up in the stand, there were loads of positives to take.

“We need to start picking up those points, but when you look at games like Ayr United away, that was a poor game from our point of view, but that was a strong performance against Queens.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t the result we wanted but we’ll work hard in training to get a result next week.”