Russell Dingwall insists Elgin City can turn their ailing season around by avoiding a Scottish Cup upset at Clydebank on Monday.
The Moray men’s 2-0 defeat at Albion Rovers at the weekend saw the side slide to ninth position in League Two, just three points ahead of rock-bottom Cowdenbeath.
City’s second round tie at Holm Park, which is live on BBC TV next week, pitches them against the Bankies, who are in title contention for the West of Scotland Premier Division.
Wide midfielder Dingwall, though, stresses the need for Elgin to use the match to their advantage on more than one front.
He said: “It will be a good night with the game being on TV. It’s a sell-out tie and there will be a good atmosphere.
“Everyone will want to see a shock, to see the lower-placed team to go through, but for us we need to turn our season around if we can win there on Monday night.
PIE & PINT 🍻 🏆
We are doing a pie & pint for our Scottish Cup fixture next Monday ⚽️
Come join us in the sports bar for this crucial match 🤩
Book now for only £5pp by contacting the Club 🖤 pic.twitter.com/x4LsAU00r5
— Elgin City F.C. (@ElginCityFC) October 18, 2021
“We’ve performed well in cups. Two years ago, we beat Dundee and Airdrie away, sides in higher leagues. We know if we can play the way we’re capable of then we’ll give anyone a good fight.
“On Monday, we’re looking to get our season going, win and take that into the league as well as progressing in the Scottish Cup.”
‘Got what we deserved’, says Dingwall
With Elgin looking on course for escaping from Albion Rovers with a point on Saturday, they lost two goals in the final 15 minutes to slip to a sore defeat and 24-year-old Dingwall admits they were not good enough.
He added: “It was a bad afternoon for us. We started well in the first 15-20 minutes when we had a couple of chances.
“We were looking more like ourselves at that point and then, in the second half, they had a couple of chances, as did we.
“But we were nowhere near ourselves and got what we deserved. I’d say we lost the battle, were not up for it and deserved to get beat.
“We like to class ourselves as a good, passing team – that’s the type of players we’ve got. We don’t have the players who can out-battle teams.
“Unfortunately, we got drawn into their game, which they are built for. We were raging to lose the game.
“We feel we’ve maybe moved away from what we’re good at in the past couple of weeks and have been getting sucked into our opponents’ game.”
The former Ross County starlet, who joined Elgin in 2019, explained the squad will train in full on Saturday in the absence of a weekend fixture as they aim to fine tune.
He added: “We’ll have had more than a week to refocus before Monday and practise what we’re good at and hopefully that will work.
“We have few south-based boys who don’t come up and train with us, but, because we don’t have a game on Saturday, we’ll train together in the morning and we can work on team shape and it could work out as a bonus for us.”
No need to panic, says Dingwall
Dingwall is urging supporters to keep the faith, because the players are ready to roll up their sleeves, with their next league game at home to Edinburgh City set for a week on Saturday.
He said: “It’s obviously not the start we wanted, but there is a long way to go this season.
“If you can string together a couple of results in this league, you get closer to where you want to be.
“We know we’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s certainly not panic stations for us.”
