Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
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Brian Reid says his entire Albion Rovers squad will be needed to overcome a tough spell of fixtures heading their way.
The Wee Rovers didn’t play on Saturday due to Kelty Hearts’scottish Cup tie at St Mirren and now a pile-up of League Two fixtures has occurred.
Reid’s men will play a run of eight matches between February 15 and March 19, starting with a trip to Edinburgh City last night, followed by Stirling Albion at Forthbank on Saturday.
Albion Rovers are ninth in the division and their boss reckons a couple of wins could see them eye the top half of the table. Defeats, however, could have them looking over their shoulder at basement club Cowdenbeath, who were six points behind going into Tuesday’s game.
Reid said:“we will need to use the full squad. We haven’t got an abundance of choice but the players have dug in. It’s been tough for some of the players as they have had to play week after week, even if they have been struggling.
“Hopefully with a couple of additions we can use the whole squad and bring a freshness. Going Saturday games into Wednesday can takes its toll.
“The players need to be ready to go and do a job as we have to start winning games. It’s that tight right now that if we win a couple, we are right in the mix.
“If we lose a couple, then we are getting dragged down the other way. It’s a pivotal moment in the season for us. We need to get back to what we were doing on our good run.
“At the moment, we aren’t scoring enough and losing poor goals. We don’t have much luck at the moment either. The Cowdenbeath game, for example, we had a penalty against us for little or nothing.
“They don’t help your cause so we might just be due a bit of luck. If we then start taking our chances and defending properly, hopefully we will start to look up the way.”
Last season’s lower league pause due to Covid meant the Cliftonhill side had to play a gruelling run of games every few days in the second half of the term.
It’s something that will stand Rovers in good stead for this testing period and Reid hopes his squad has enough to get through things.
Reid added:“this run isn’t something we aren’t used to as we had a run like this last season.“it is what it is. Sometimes it can be good to have game after game as we can hopefully get some results from it. So we will just need to see how we get on.”