TRANMERE Rovers' boss Micky Mellon is preparing his side for what promises to be a difficult home game against Barrow this weekend.

The team goes into Saturday's game in 18th position in the National League standings, but Mellon said the current league placing is something to be used as motivation for the players.

During a press confidence at Rovers' Solar Campus training ground ahead of the game, he said: "We know that we should be in a better position in the league table than we are and are working very hard to fix that. There's no doubt about that.

"The players are working their socks off every day in training to put things right.

"We know where we need to improve, and that's by converting the opportunities when they come along into goals.

"We know we need to convert our chances.

"Last season we were in the lead in a lot of games, so we need to do that and get going again.

"The standards which we set and the expectations that we put on ourselves is that we want to win every game we take part in and then we want to play well.

"So we'll continue to work towards that.

"Not scoring five goals in eight games is not good enough. So, we’ve given ourselves a lot to do.

"We need to improve, convert the chances and get going.

"We're already covering all the basis, it's just about taking more chances and opportunities when they come along.

"We, like you, look at the league table and we’re not happy about it all, so we’ll use that as motivation."

Assessing this weekend's opponents, he said: "It's a difficult league, every week's very competitive and we know that Barrow will be no different.

"The challenges are different at times, but that doesn't mean they will be any less.

"Barrow will come and give us the problems they will, we've just got to take the chances that we will create and get things moving forward.”