Mark Stafford believes there are positives to take out of another disappointing home defeat after Ballinamallard United went down 3-0 to Annagh United at Ferney Park last Saturday.

The manager was buoyed by a new strength in depth within his squad that he has not had since the start of September.

Richie Johnston made his first start for 10 weeks, and Alex Holder and Aaron Harkin came off the substitute’s bench in the second-half to make their return from long-term injuries.

With captain Aaron Arkinson also now injury-free, Stafford is hopeful that the return of key players will lift the club up the NIFL Championship table.

“The performance in the second-half gives me a lot of hope,” he said.

“Looking at the league table, Newry and Institute won on Saturday so we are down in a relegation battle now.

"There is no doubt that is where we are at. We have a lot of work to do in the next three of four months, but I think if we had those players on the pitch from the start of the game we probably would have had a bit more control of the game and had control of the ball a bit better.

"We had Richie Johnston back and it was super to get him through 90 minutes. Alex Holder played his first 45 minutes in over two months and Harkin came on, and you could see the difference they made in the middle of the pitch. Aaron Arkinson was my man of the match and was outstanding again, and going forward we are going to need them.”

Defeat to Annagh on Saturday saw Ballinamallard slip to within three points of the relegation play-off spot, and Stafford admitted his team were not good enough on the day.

“We have a lot to do and defensively we need to be better,” he conceded.

“We can’t let teams come and score goals like we did on Saturday. It’s just so poor. It is a weak way to go behind, three set pieces. We need to be a lot stronger and show a lot more character in those situations.

"We didn’t defend well in the first-half. We didn’t deal with the set pieces. It was a topic during the week at training, but we still didn’t manage to deal with it. We conceded from a long throw and two corners.

"We struggled in that department, and we didn’t really create anything either. We couldn’t get on top of them in midfield. They were going long, as we knew they would, and they were causing us problems the whole time in the first-half.

"We made a couple of substitutions at halftime and brought Alex Holder on and Aaron Harkin came on as well and we regained control of the game. We were good in the second-half, but they didn’t have to come out too much.

"We had a couple of chances to score but we had left ourselves far too much to do.”

Ballinamallard face another tough test this weekend with a trip to table-topping Bangor.

The Mallards produced one of their best performances of the season in the reverse fixture to beat the promotion favourites 4-0 at Ferney Park, but Stafford is expecting a different challenge this weekend.

“It’s not going to be a good time to play them because they will be coming into it on the back of a defeat,” he reckoned.

“They are going to be looking a response to the result against Stute, but it is a ground where we have done quite well recently. Hopefully we can put in a good performance.

"We will go to the game with confidence in terms of the way we played in the second-half and try to bring that into the game against Bangor.”