Stirling Albion boss Darren Young is hoping victory over Edinburgh City tonight can boost their League Two play-off hopes.
Gary Naysmith’s side currently occupy the final play-off place and are seven points in front of the seventh-placed Binos, who can ill afford to lose any more ground if they want to go on and claim a top-four finish.
It’s a big week for the team, with a rearranged game against Forfar Athletic at Forthbank on Tuesday followed by the visit of Albion Rovers next weekend.
One of Albion’s best performances this season came in their 2-2 draw away to Edinburgh City in September when they should have taken all three points, but the Citizens came from behind to win 2-1 at Forthbank in November.
Edinburgh have given their play-off hopes a boost thanks to back-to-back wins away to Forfar Athletic and Stranraer and Stirling are one of several clubs hoping to overhaul them in a tight division, which looks certain to be won by Kelty Hearts.
Young said: “It’s a very tight league so it’s just about trying to put a run of results together – we just need to concentrate on ourselves and not worry too much about the teams around us.
“We’ve done well away from home recently so hopefully we can continue that and improve things at home.
“It was a very good performance on the plastic pitch at Annan recently and there’s no reason why we can’t carry that on because I feel we are improving as a team.
“We’ve got most of the squad back from injury now and the game being off last week will help one or two who were carrying knocks but we were disappointed the match was off.
“We haven’t ruled out adding to the squad if the right player becomes available because we have until the end of the month to make loan signings.
Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area.
“We obviously lost Daniel Scally, Dylan Bikey and Sean Heaver. I know Sean scored for Linlithgow at the weekend and we didn’t want to lose him but he wanted to give himself a chance of more regular first-team football.
“We’ve had to chop and change the team quite a lot which we’d prefer not to do but we changed the formation against Annan and did well. We just need to be more ruthless in front of goal because we created a lot of chances and didn’t manage to take any of
them.
“The guys who have come in have done well – I thought young Mason Hancock was brilliant at Annan up against Chris Johnston, who is one of the best attacking players in the league.
“Dylan Paterson came on and made a good impact and we have options, which keeps players on their toes.”
