EDDIE HIT BY INJURY

The Blues travel to take on Crusaders (kick-off 3pm) before hosting Glentoran in the Irn-Bru League Cup on Monday evening.

However, they will now be without full-backs McCallion, who will be out for six to ten weeks with medial ligament damage, and Marc Brown, who is suspended for the first of those two games.

First team coach Nigel Law is looking on the bright side as several players could come back into the squad for this weekend’s games.

He said: “Guy Bates will be back and another couple of players aren’t too far away. Niall Henderson will play for the reserves this week and Brendan Shannon is back in training.

“They are a few players who will give us an impetus because they are quality and they’re winners and they believe in themselves.

“James Singleton came off the bench last Saturday and played with that bit of energy and enthusiasm so we feel that we have enough in the squad at the minute to change things if we need to.”

The Blues have been struggling with their form lately, having picked up just one point from their last six league games and Law knows that the slide down the table must be halted sooner rather than later.

“We have to turn it around,” he said.

“We’ve tried to keep preaching to the players to believe, to trust each other, to trust us as a management team, to trust the fans and to stay united. That’s a big thing.

“We’re not panicking. We have a system and a template that we believe in and we’ll stick by it but we’ll look every day at how we can gradually improve every time we’re together.

“We have to improve that bit every time we’re together so that in the grand scheme of things, that development becomes sustainable.

“It’ll be very tough this weekend and I know that the club don’t have a good record up at Seaview, stretching back for a few years.

“We’ll approach the game, look at Crusaders, see what we know about them and see if we can set ourselves up to try and address the bad run of form that we’re on at the minute.”