Morgyn Neill has seen enough of struggling teams to sympathise with what Cove Rangers are going through just now.
It is still early in their debut Championship season but four defeats on the bounce have sent Cove into a place they are not necessarily familiar with.
Over the last three years their progress has been constant and maybe surprising to some on the outside of the club. The jump they made this summer has arguably been the greatest since joining the SPFL and it has been a bit of a shock to the system.
But Neill, who has been involved with scraps at the bottom at previous clubs like Stenhousemuir and Dumbarton, knows the feeling of needing to scrap to get out of trouble.
The season is still young – five games in – and Neill wants Cove to stick together to turn things around.
“I checked the scores at the end and I don’t think there’s any consistent teams in the Scottish leagues,” said Neill. “It doesn’t matter if you’re bottom or top – anybody can beat anybody.
“For myself, in past experience, I know what it’s like being down there and you’re only seeing above you, when you’re not getting there.
“At the end of the day it’s about characters. You need to stick together, because if any individuals start doing their own thing on the park, which you can get in this situation, it’s hard collectively to get the result we all want.”
One of the biggest strengths of Cove’s squad during their rise through the leagues has been the familiarity among the players.
Many had come through the ranks at Aberdeen during their younger days and had been together at Cove since they won promotion from the Highland League.
“The gaffer has said numerous times that we’ve got a good honest bunch,” said Neill. “Guys that have played with each other and were Aberdeen products years and years ago.
“We’re going through a sticky patch which is new to the club, because they’ve been used to winning. Everybody sticking together can hopefully change our fortunes.”
There were much more positive signs in the weekend defeat to Queen’s Park and they now have back-to-back home games, against Hamilton Accies and Dundee, to spark a turnaround in form.
“We’ve still got a small squad compared to everybody else and we can’t keep looking to how good we were in the past,” said Neill.
“That’s all history, it’s about what we do now. It’s maybe hard to recruit players because of the location of the club and we’re still a part-time club compared to everybody else.
“We had a good reaction to last week and we had key players out. We completed very well and I thought we had better chances than them, we just weren’t ruthless enough.
“It’s slack goals we could have dealt with better. It’s a good reaction but the table doesn’t lie. We have to change it quickly.”
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