Saturdays 4-1 victory at home to Kinnoull FC in the East of Scotland Cup could be a huge moment for the club even at this early stage of the season.
After 6 straight defeats in the league the pressure was well and truly on to get back to winning ways, Â but the fact we were playing a lower division team, that had enjoyed a great start in their league we knew that we needed to ensure that we took to the field in the correct frame of mind.
In preparation for the game, we played a closed door game against our Under 19’s team on the Wednesday evening and won the game convincingly, scoring a number of goals. The purpose of the game was to get the confidence back in the squad by scoring goals and more importantly getting back to basics which we did and it was very pleasing to see. We were also able to give game time to boys returning from injury so it was a very worthwhile exercise. Full credit to the Under 19’s who worked tirelessly for 90 minutes, continually trying to play the game in the right way.
There is definitely some exciting young talent in that squad, so the future looks bright with the progression we are looking for from the Youth set up.
Saturday’s team selection gave us our first problem, because for the first time, we had more than 16 fit and available players, so we had to make some tough decisions when it came to starting 11. During the week we had also added in ex Dundee United defender Adam Harwood on loan from Montrose FC, into the squad as well, who we expect big things from.
We could not have asked for a better start when we took the lead in the 6 minute with a very well worked goal and from that moment we started to dominate the game, putting Kinnoull under pressure with sustained waves of attack for majority of the game. We scored a further 3 goals during the game which were all well deserved but should have scored more kissing 2 or 3 very simple chances, however that is being very critical.
The positives from Saturday were quite obviously the fact that we won the game and stopped the recent bad run of form, however from my point of view we played some really good football and defended so much better than previous weeks. We now have 3 big league games coming up (Penicuik, Camelon and Musselburgh) where we need to take the confidence from last week’s victory/performance,  to ensure that we can really kick start our league season.
