RYAN Lowe has challenged his Bury team to go on another unbeaten run after losing at Blackburn on Monday night.

The Shakers avoided defeat in Lowe’s first five games back in charge, picking up nine points from a possible 15.

That moved them above Rochdale at the bottom of League One but Bury are still 10 points from safety – only two less than when Chris Lucketti was sacked last month.

Lowe has 13 games left to lead the second-bottom Shakers to survival and knows they must reproduce that form to have any chance of staying up.

“We gave a good account of ourselves at Blackburn but we gifted them two goals,” said Lowe.

“We also need to be a bit more composed on the ball. We gave it away too cheaply when there was no real pressure on us.

“But we’ll work on that, we’ll show the lads footage, because we’ve got some good footballers and we showed that over the previous five games.

“We can’t dwell on it, it’s gone now. We’ve asked the lads to brush it under the carpet because we need to look forward and get ready for Saturday.

“We’ve got 13 vital games to play and if we can put together more runs like we just have done then hopefully we’ll be okay.”

Three of Bury’s next four games are at home, beginning with Saturday’s visit of Gillingham.

The Gills were also struggling when the sides last met, a 1-1 draw at the Priestfield Stadium when Lowe was caretaker boss in November, but they have since climbed to 11th.

“They’re doing quite well,” Lowe added. “They’ve picked up of late.

“When we went there we got at them and got in their faces, but they’ll come up here and they’ll be up for it.

“We’ve just lost our unbeaten record and we want it back, starting on Saturday.”

Bury’s excellent FA Youth Cup run came to an end on Friday as Birmingham won 3-1 at Gigg Lane.

The visitors led the fifth-round tie 2-0 at half-time and although Callum Styles pulled one back, the Midlanders scored again to reach the quarter-finals.