INTERIM Morton boss Anton McElhone has warned his squad that they are now playing for their futures after their slump in form continued with a crushing defeat to Ayr United.

Ton looked to distance themselves from the Honest Men and bottom side Alloa but they now they find themselves languishing in the relegation play-offs following Saturday's 2-0 defeat.

McElhone revealed contract talks for next season have been put on hold with his side in relegation trouble and he has stressed they must up their game to maintain their Championship status.

He told the Tele: “Saturday was really disappointing and hard to take, but let's be really honest here, the fans want to see good performances, goals and victories and we haven’t been good enough for the whole of 2021 so far.

“At the end of the day, if it’s happening every week it's not just a one off. When you’re hoping to progress and build for next year, getting players' contracts sorted out, then you can honestly see why the club are holding off and are wanting to sit back.

“They want to wait and see what happens, it’s not the way we want things to happen, but you’ve got to go and earn your crust.

“It seemed like Groundhog Day out there, it wasn’t good enough, the tempo wasn’t there, and we were really slow.

“I thought we were okay in the first half and then we’ve got to go and do more from that, we were on the back foot from the off and then we only threw a little bit of the kitchen sink at them in the last 10 to 15 minutes, we can’t be doing that.

“It’s not acceptable as a club, as staff or as players, we’ve disappointed everyone.

“This is the same team that should’ve won at Hearts and then should’ve beat Dundee last week, is that maybe a false position? I don’t think so.

“When it’s come to the crunch games, we’ve not done well enough – Queens and Arbroath were the prime examples - and we’ve done it again on Saturday.

“We’ve got to find the motivation to go on and really take the game to people now.

“Yet again it’s been us who have made the mistakes out there, it’s the same every week and we need to take responsibility for that and stopping it from happening.”

McElhone hopes that all it will take is one result to turn the tide and he has called for his players to show what they’re made of tomorrow night at Inverness Caley Thistle and prove that they want to be at the club.

He said: “One game could be the catalyst to turn things around and it’ll be a really tough ask to go all the way up to Inverness to go and remedy that - but we’ve done it against Dunfermline.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re right back into a game on Tuesday to try and flush it out the system.

“We’ll have been in on Sunday and will train Monday to go again.

“It’s going to be a really tough one for us but we’ll need to roll our sleeves up.

“Let's see who wants to be at this club next season.”