STRIKEFORCE sensations Michael Moffat and Lawrence Shankland have been praised by Ayr United captain Ross Docherty after scoring the goals which took them into joint top-spot.

They were on target in an impressive 2-0 home derby victory against Stranraer, which helped stretch the team's unbeaten run to five games in League One.

Shankland, who scored his seventh goal in seven games on Saturday, is out of contract at the end of the year and midfielder Docherty said: "Lawrence was one or the top scorers in the Championship with St Mirren and has shown he is well capable of playing in the league above. But hopefully if we keep winning games and have a chance of winning the league he will want to stay here. He is certainly doing the business."

Of Moffat, he said: "Everyone knew Michael was waiting on his 100th goal and had missed a couple of chances, but since he reached 100, he has scored a few more and has four in the last two games."

The skipper is impressed with his team's form and said: "If we had won a couple of games which were drawn we could have been clear at the top. But we are now five games unbeaten and have had two clean sheets. When we dropping points we were still scoring goals but now we are keeping clean sheets and have a pretty solid back four which is looking good and David Ferguson has done well at right-back. Conceding goals puts pressure on the forward players to score. Now we just need to score one or tow goals to win.

He added: "Going full-time has helped as well as our organisation and fitness is good. We scored two second half goals on Saturday and last week four second half goals - other teams don't have as good fitness as us."

Docherty feels there is a lot of variety in the side.

He said:"We have a very attacking team and goals are coming from a lot of places.

The fans will be happy as everyone likes a team who can score plenty of goals. Some people are quick to criticise at times. Every team goes through a lull as we did. We were always playing well enough it was not taking chances and making silly mistakes. We are joint top although Raith have a game in hand. We play them in a couple of weeks and our aim was always to be in touching distance."

But Docherty warns Saturday's trip to third-placed Arbroath will be tough.

He said: "Arbroath is always a difficult place to go, they beat us the last time we faced each other and on the day deserved to.

"It will be tough but the boys are full of confidence and we want to go there and win

"I would have taken our current position before the start of the season, especially when halfway through the first quarter we were five points behind Raith."