POSITIVE Barrow boss Michael Jolley believes his side have what it takes to maintain their Football League status despite their latest loss.

The battling Bluebirds suffered their third defeat in four games as prolific pair Paul Mullin and Joe Ironside sent Cambridge United three points clear at the top of League Two.

Barrow are just two points above the dreaded drop zone back to non-league football.

But Jolley has been in this position before and famously kept Grimsby Town up from a seemingly unsalvageable situation in the 2017/18 season.

And he stressed: “I’m move than confident that we’ve got what it takes to achieve our objective this season.

“We can’t be naive about the fact that we are third from bottom in League Two.

“We need to get some points on the board very quickly as well.

“There’s still a long way to go. We played top of the league and matched them for long periods.

“I’m not too down about today, but equally we must start putting points on the board.”

The Bluebirds are suffering an injury crisis much like the one which scuppered their start to the season.

Chris Taylor went off and was replaced by Tom Beadling who also later went off injured.

Former Carlisle winger Jamie Devitt only lasted the first half on his full debut, whilst Scott Quigley came off late on with dizziness after passing a late fitness test on the morning of the game.

But Jolley has urged his under-fire charges to respond better to adversity.

And he admitted: “The last 24 hours has been crazy with injuries.

“We lost Matty Platt late yesterday, although he had a fitness test this morning. We had to test Quigs this morning and he came through most of the game today.

“We’ve had a huge amount of disruption and I think that affected our performance overall. You say it’s been a difficult spell but it’s what life is like in the Football League and League Two.

“We’re going to play good teams, we’re going to concede goals, we’re going to have set backs with injuries or whatever.

"We have to respond to that and that’s the challenge.

“We can’t look at it as a difficult thing, we have to say ‘that’s the challenge’ and put our shoulders back and really be positive and move forward.”

But Jolley is already looking for a response when they host promotion-chasing Exeter on Tuesday night.

“We have to lick our wounds, dust ourselves off and look forward to the next game.

“We conceded a disappointing goal before half time and that knocked us a bit but we need to do better with that.

“I thought we matched them in the second half but we conceded from a set-piece. We knew what sort of threat they bring with those.

“We need to have the right response to set backs because in football they happen all the time.

“We tried to regroup at half-time but we had three injuries to deal with. There was a lot of disruption around half time.”