No complacency as Petrie has goals in mind

No danger of Montrose manager getting carried away with success

They may have reached the top of the league but Montrose are still a work in progress, according to manager Stewart Petrie.

Narrow victories have been the Links Park side’s party piece in their journey to the head of the table, but now attention has turned to scoring a few more goals.

“I’m conscious of the fact that we need to find the net more,” said Petrie ahead of today’s trip to Clyde.

“We’ve done well to see out games, and our back three have been very good, but you can’t do that every week.

“It’s something we’ve worked on through the week. There’s always plenty of room for improvement and that goes for the coaches and the players.”

Montrose haven’t been top of their division at this stage of a season for more than 20 years. Getting there is a “reward” for the players, directors and supporters, but their grounded manager isn’t getting carried away.

“It certainly beats being at the other end of the table, that’s for sure,” he said.

“Just ask anybody who was here when the club were in the play-offs to stay in the SPFL.

“Another way of looking at it is we’re 20 points off the bottom.

“This league can change very quickly and every game needs to be treated as a cup final, which is what we’re doing.

“It’s not been hard to motivate the players, and when we’ve made changes it hasn’t been detrimental to our results. We’ve got lots of big games coming up and that squad will be needed.”

Petrie wanted to put on record his appreciation of the support Montrose have been getting.

He said: “On Saturday the fans were unbelievable. We had over 100, which is two buses, at Stenhousemuir. It was similar at Cowdenbeath as well. That size of support can make a real difference.”

Petrie has no fresh injury concerns.

Picture: SNS. Stewart Petrie says Montrose have done well but must find the net more often.