Peterhead midfielder Scott Brown has urged the Blue Toon to put defeats by full-time teams in League 1 behind them by ensuring they finish January with a flourish.
Falkirk beat the Blue Toon 3-1 to strengthen their promotion challenge – while Peterhead find themselves in eighth place, just three points ahead of second-bottom Forfar.
With matches against Dumbarton and Montrose up next, Brown knows it is important his side responds.
He said: “We need to make sure we are safe, first and foremost.
“We’ve got Dumbarton in two weeks’ time and we have to start picking up points.
“If we start slipping towards the bottom two, it won’t be nice for us.
“We’ve played two full-time teams in the last two weeks and lost 2-1 and 3-1.
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about but we know we could have done better in both games and it’s important we win our next couple of matches.”
The Bairns were on the front foot from the first whistle and they deservedly opened the scoring in the 10th minute.
Blue Toon defender Mick Dunlop made a superb challenge to deny Morgaro Gomis as he shaped to shoot but the ball broke to Declan McManus and the on-loan Ross County striker fired past Greg Fleming to make it 1-0 to the visitors.
Rory McAllister responded for the home side with a fine run and shot which was saved at the near post by Robbie Mutch.
But the pace and guile of the visiting attack caused Peterhead problems and the visitors doubled their lead in the 24th minute.
Full back Michael Doyle pushed forward before firing a low ball into the box. Connor Sammon stepped over the ball, creating the space for McManus, who took a touch before firing his second goal of the game low into the bottom right hand corner.
It looked a long way back for the Blue Toon at that point but they were handed an immediate lifeline as Falkirk defender Mark Durnan turned a Dunlop downward header into his own net to make it 2-1 to the visitors.
From facing adversity the home side suddenly found some impetus and Derek Lyle and McAllister had chances to pull their side level, but both failed to hit the target.
Falkirk regained their control in the second half and in the 50th minute Durnan almost made amends for his own-goal with a near-post header from Charlie Telfer’s corner, but his glancing effort went just wide of the far post.
Fleming then did well to deny Telfer after he had raced clear from Aidan Connolly’s through ball.
The visitors were not to be denied, however, and their pressure paid off in the 62nd minute when home defender David Ferguson pulled Connolly to the ground as the winger tried to get on the end of McManus’ cross.
A penalty was given and Ferguson was sent off. McManus fired in the spot kick for his hat-trick.
Brown added: “We were never going to come back from going down to 10 men so early against a full-time team.There wasn’t much in it but we found ourselves two goals down after their first two chances.
“We needed to make it as difficult as possible against a full-time team and we didn’t do that.”
