Albion Rovers boss knows what to expect from Cumbernauld Colts after club raided them for players this summer
Albion Rovers boss Sandy Clark says he will know what to expect from Saturday's Lowland League opener with Cumbernauld Colts - because their local rivals raided them for players over the summer.
Colts snapped up a trio of stars from Rovers in the close season with right-backs Callum Home and Adam Fernie making the move from Monklands alongside forward Billy Mortimer. New Colts striker Josh Jack is also a former Rovers player.
So with a derby to kick-off their new Lowland League campaign, Clark will be very familiar with some of the threats the visitors will pose.
Asked what he is expecting from Colts, Clark said: 'I'm expecting to know a lot of their players! Some of them have certainly played here. I think they will be a little bit more experienced than us.
'Will they be better? I have no idea, time will tell. Will we give them a game? 100 per cent, we will give them a game alright and on the day, it will be a case of may the best team win.
'At training we try to replicate match situations as best we can, so we've had a good bit of time to prepare. This week we will really concentrate on Cumbernauld Colts and I'm sure we will be ready for that.'
Rovers warmed up for that clash with a 3-2 friendly defeat at home to St Mirren B on Saturday.
Nathan Brown and club captain Alan Reid were on target for the hosts against the Premiership youth outfit and Clark was disappointed with his side's defending at the Buddies' goals.
Reacting to the result, Clark told the club media: 'We worked well. We are trying to rebuild the squad and it was a good challenge for us. Playing St Mirren B was like when we play Hearts B and Celtic B in league games, with their players passing the ball really well, they are fit, they are full-time, they are organised.
'So that's where the real challenge came from and I thought we handled it fairly well. If you look at the game, we've lost a goal inside 30 seconds, which is really poor play from us.
'We didn't stop the cross and our lads are saying it might have been offside, but at the end of the day their striker got in between our two defenders and it was a good header.
'We reacted well to it, got back into the game and made it 1-1, but then we lost a second goal from a header in the box again. So there is a warning there that we need to stop crosses and pick up players better.
'We lost our way a bit at that point and St Mirren got their third goal. Nathan Brown got us back into it with a good goal to make it 3-2 at half-time, but I felt we were the better team in the second half.
'We scored a really good goal that I felt was well onside but the officials didn't see it that way.
'We had some other chances, we stopped St Mirren playing, our press was better and what we got out of it in the end was a lot of fitness for certain players and I got a good look at the trialists. Our squad will be much clearer by Saturday.'
Kick-off at Cliftonhill on Saturday is 3pm.
Gers kid signs on loan at Rovers
Albion Rovers have snapped up goalkeeper Alfie Halliwell on loan from Rangers as they prepare to kick-off the new Lowland League season on Saturday.
Cliftonhill gaffer Sandy Clark has added are the Scotland Youth International to his ranks and the teenager made his first outing for the Monklands men in Saturday's 3-2 friendly defeat to St Mirren B.
The 17-year-old shot-stopper rose through the ranks at the Ibrox-based side, featuring in the Rangers B squad that lifted the Glasgow Cup, as well as training with the Rangers First Team squad on occasion, working alongside former Stoke City and Manchester Utd goalkeeper Jack Butland and former QPR and Motherwell goalkeeper Liam Kelly.
On the international stage, Alfie has two caps for the Scotland Men's U17s, making his debut in an international friendly away to Switzerland and was recently called up to a U19s training camp at the end of last season.
Halliwell said: 'It feels really good and I am really excited for the season.
'Once I spoke to Sandy, I really wanted to play under him. Both him and George [Paterson] are really experienced in the game.
'I'm here to keep the ball out the back of the net. I am a young player that wants to play in men's football.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
16 minutes ago
- BBC News
'We back ourselves' - Gordon eyes Rangers scalp to ignite Askou era
Motherwell defender Liam Gordon is excited to put Jens Berthel Askou's "fresh ideas" into practice in the Premiership opener at home to manager Askou's clear vision of possession-based attractive football has been evident in the Steelmen's successful League Cup group-stage campaign and pre-season draw with Hertha Berlin."We've learned lots of new ideas and we're really enjoying it, I'm just exited to take the new style into the league campaign," said Gordon."I think you can see from the first few games against Hertha and then the League Cup games we're focusing much more on possession and controlling the game on and off the ball."The manager has given us a good structure to build from and we all know our jobs. It's been very detailed personally and collectively. He's brought a nice fresh idea to Motherwell and hopefully it will be successful."Gordon believes the visit of Rangers on Saturday is the perfect test, adding: "I get that it's tough right at the start of the season, but I think it's a great game to kick us off. Especially at home to one of the biggest teams in the country."You can always be better but we take confidence from the Hertha game, who were a very good opposition and probably a similar standard to Rangers."So I don't see why we can't do the same again, we're under no illusion it will be easy but we back ourselves."Askou has not ruled out the possibility of Lennon Miller featuring on Saturday and Gordon praised the teenage star's mentality amid fervent transfer speculation."He just handles his business, I sometimes feel I'm a young player speaking to him the way he carries himself but honestly he's been brilliant," he said."So much noise around him but you'd never know, just takes it in his stride. I'd be a nervous wreck so credit to him."
Glasgow Times
an hour ago
- Glasgow Times
Are Falkirk going to rub Scottish football's face in its own faeces?
Utter woke nonsense? Not really. The practice is now believed to be ineffective, inhumane and unhygienic. Positive reinforcement methods, such as lavishing Fido with praise and treats for answering the call of nature outdoors instead of inside, are recommended these days. But could Scottish football benefit greatly from having its face shoved into its own faeces in the season ahead? If Championship champions Falkirk flourish in the Premiership using predominantly homegrown players and deploying an attacking brand of football in the coming months, will our elite clubs realise their actions have been wrong, learn invaluable lessons, be shamed into making changes and reconsider their strategies going forward? That very much depends on how John McGlynn's side, who achieved a second successive promotion and clinched a long-awaited return to the top flight after a 15 year absence amid scenes of mass euphoria in Forth Valley back in May, fares during the coming months. Read more: McGlynn, the vastly-experienced former Raith Rovers, Hearts and Livingston manager who is now in his 64th year, has shown no signs that he is going to abandon the laudable philosophies which have served him and his club so well in the past couple of campaigns in recent weeks. His starting line-up in the Premier Sports Cup group game against Spartans at the Falkirk Stadium last weekend contained no fewer than 10 Scots and one Canadian – Dechmont-born Scott Arfield. Taking on Dundee United, who finished fourth in the Premiership last term and qualified for the Conference League, at home tomorrow in their league opener will be, even with a bumper crowd roaring them on, a far more difficult outing for his men than that encounter with fourth tier opposition. Still, he is sure to once again put his faith in the local lads who have served him so well in the past after refusing to go down the route which so many of his fellow managers do and swell his squad with foreign imports during the summer. He has brought in Scott Bain and Brian Graham on free transfers after the goalkeeper and striker departed Celtic and Partick Thistle respectively. He has also landed Lewis Neilson on loan from Hearts. (Image: Craig Williamson - SNS Group) Henry Cartright, an English midfielder, has joined from Leicester City until May. But the promising 20-year-old is one of just three non-Scots in the Falkirk squad. Arfield and Ghanian forward Alfredo Agyeman are the only others. The contrast with United couldn't be any greater. The make-up to the Tayside club's XI in their European qualifier against UNA Strassen of Luxembourg last week was alarming and depressing in equal measure. Jim Goodwin fielded footballers from Ukraine, Australia, Moldova, Hungary, the Netherlands, Croatia, Ghana, the Republic of Ireland and North Macedonia. But not a single Scot made it into his side. Goodwin, who brought on young Owen Stirton and Craig Sibbald in the second half of the 1-0 win over Strassen, has done a phenomenal job as manager at Tannadice and only a fool would bet against him replicating the success which he has savoured to date this season with the overseas acquisitions he has brought in To a large degree, his reliance on professionals from his homeland, mainland Europe, Africa and further afield is understandable. Academies here are having their outstanding prospects plundered at an early age for a pittance by English rivals who are unable to sign kids under the age of 18 from the Schengen Area because of Brexit. There is no longer the same quality coming through the youth ranks. Read more: The Irishman is not alone in turning to foreigners in an attempt to achieve his ambitions. They are far more readily available and much more affordable than Scots. All of his contemporaries have taken an identical approach. To do anything else would be nothing short of lunacy. Wouldn't it? If McGlynn succeeds in keeping Falkirk up in the Premiership this season it will show that homegrown talent is undervalued, unappreciated and underused and underline that clubs and managers should be promoting native footballers far more than is currently the case. Of course, if the promoted side, as many observers are predicting, bomb spectacularly, quickly become embroiled in a relegation dogfight in the bottom half of the table and ultimately suffer relegation then it will have entirely the opposite impact. (Image: Craig Williamson - SNS Group) It will, too, be interesting to see how the promoted side get on if, as looks very likely on the evidence of their competitive run-outs of late, they continue to try and dominate possession, create scoring opportunities using intricate passing combinations and clever movement and place a major emphasis on entertaining paying punters. Most teams of their size and stature defend in numbers and seek to score on the counter when they come against the likes of [[Celtic]], Rangers, Hearts, Hibernian and Aberdeen. Will [[Falkirk]] pay a high price for throwing caution to the wind? Will they be rewarded for their bravery? Will it end up leaving them right in the s***? It will be fascinating finding out. Every dog, so the old saying goes, has its day. Anyone who cares about the future of the game in this country and the national side should be hoping that Falkirk are able to stick to their guns and maintain their upturn in fortunes this season. It will maybe give Scottish football a little food for thought if they do.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Livi's attacking style can reap rewards, says McGowan
Ryan McGowan insists Livingston can replicate their attacking Championship form in the top Martindale's men start life back in the Premiership against Kilmarnock on Saturday and defender McGowan thinks opposition fans might be surprised by Livi's style this season."The gaffer said it publicly before, sometimes when you're in the top flight it's just more survival and worrying about what other teams are going to do to you instead of possibly what you can do to hurt them and get points," said McGowan."That's what we did as a club last season. It was kind of a reset and we controlled most of the ball. We played pretty good football for probably 90% of the season last year and that's something we want to take into this season."If you've watched our cup games so far, it will probably be a little bit of a different Livingston to what was in the Premiership in years gone by."It's up to us as players to really put to work what we're doing during the week into games and hopefully that gets us points and gets us up the league."We play a different kind of style from the team that got relegated a couple of seasons ago, but it's one that we believe we will be successful with and fingers crossed that happens."
