Peterhead boss Jim McInally believes his side will be written off in League One before the season begins – but they can use it to their advantage.
The Blue Toon will start the season at home to recently-relegated Alloa Athletic on July 31, before going on the road to a Falkirk side desperate to challenge for promotion.
The addition of Queen’s Park to the league and the financial muscle they will bring increases the competition but McInally reckons Peterhead can punch above their weight.
He said: “People probably see us and Clyde as the teams to go down. We just need to show we’re better than that.
“You can use it. I’ve seen some stuff from our players saying they’re looking higher this season and that’s fine, but I think I’m a bit more realistic than that. With it being such a tough league, first and foremost we need to make sure we win enough games to stay in it.
“Although last season was shortened, we were only two or three games from being in the top four. There’s a happy medium there. We need to learn to draw more games and if we could do it, we’ll be OK.
“You look at the standards we set last season in games and they were very good. We beat Falkirk, we beat Airdrie. We know what we can do and hopefully we’re stronger this year.
“We’re an up-and-coming team a bit, which quite excites you. We’ve got a lot of young legs in our team. It’s a good challenge.”
The derbies against Cove Rangers are on September 18 and January 2 at Balmoor, with the return games at the Balmoral Stadium on November 13 and March 5.
With the amount of teams with promotion ambitions, the Peterhead boss thinks the pressure will tell on these sides at some stage.
McInally added: “There’s nothing you’d ever say ‘that’s a good tie’. You’ve got a chance of winning every game you go into.
“I think the pressure is on Alloa a wee bit, because they’ve brought Barry (Ferguson) in and their chairman will be expecting them to go straight back up again.
“They’ll be well-funded, with a few years of Championship money plus the government grant last year, so I’d imagine they’d have a big budget.
“If we play as we did last year in games, we’ll be OK and we’ll be a handful for teams. It’s a really tough league, probably even tougher this year, but we’ll just get on with it.
“You’ve got Queen’s Park, Alloa, Falkirk, Airdrie – they all can’t win. At some point there comes a pressure on these teams; you need to try add to that.”
