Raith Rovers boss Ian Murray reveals why top scorer Lewis Vaughan has been unused substitute in past two games

“Lewis has been really, really fatigued in the last seven to 10 days,” Murray told RaithTV. “He’s had a bit of pain on his body, not on his previous injuries I have to stress that.

"Lewis has not been able to really train properly. We’ve had to really manage him now in the last seven days.

"If I’m being really brutally honest, in an ideal world Lewis would probably have rested up for the last week.

"But at this stage of the season and with Lewis’s appetite, hunger and quality we try and keep him around and use him when we kind of really, really needed to.

"But Lewis as definitely been struggling a little bit in terms of his pain which is understandable with the injuries he’s had and the amount of times we’ve asked him to go and play football this season.

"He’s come from nowhere the last 18 months to being a massive part of our squad.

"So hopefully having a low key week puts him in good stead for the rest of the season.”

Murray has vowed his second-placed team will keep “plugging away” in their final four league games to try and overhaul a four-point deficit to leaders Dundee United.

He said: "You would need a wiser man than me to try and predict this league.

"It’s just all over the place. It’s very, very difficult, every single game and every single team you come up against.

"We’ve beaten Dunfermline five out of six, Airdrie have beaten us four out of five and Ayr United have gone and done them four times. That’s how mad it is. We just keep plugging away and keep going.

"Like everyone else, I want to be one point off the top of the league going into the last four games but the gap is four points now.

"We will do everything we can every single day from now until May 3 to get as many points as we can.

"If we find ourselves in the play-offs we will face that, look forward to that and think we can do it.

"I certainly believe in this group of players.

"If we fall short for whatever reason, that’s life, that’s football, but we’ll keep going.”