Naysmith praises young Fifers

EAST FIFE boss Gary Naysmith focused on the positives after watching his makeshift s i de competewell with Rangers in the Petrofac Training Cup onTuesday night.

The Ibrox men ran out comfortable enough 2-0 winners to reach the semifinals in the end, but Naysmith’s team were far from disgraced as they put on a creditable showing — especially when you consider the Bayview boss could muster just 14 players due to injuries.

Naysmith was full of praise for his young squad and hopes they can take great heart from the experience into their LeagueTwo campaign.

“What’s happened is that we deliberately went with a smaller squad, 20/21, which is enough because we don’t have a reserve team, we don’t have a youth team,” he explained.

“If you’ve not got a reserve team or a youth team, I don’t know how you could legislate for having a bigger squad.

“But what’s happened is that we’ve just got three or four injuries at the same time, and unfortunately it’s all our left-sided players.

“I’ve got five left-sided players in the team and all of themareinjured, so then youget animbalanceinthe team because you are having to get a right-sided player to come in.

“It might only happen once or twice more this season. We’ve just got to deal with it and we’re not the only team in the league that it’s going to happen to.

“I’ve said to the players that it’s great because although they are going to play in positions they wouldn’t normally play in, for their football education it’s brilliant.

“If you can come through that it will help you in your career.”

East Fife are next in action away to Queen’s Park on Saturday as they aim to get their promotion bid back on track.

SNS. Christian Nade.