Management thoughts on last Saturday and Preston tomorrow.

Posted on Monday, August 1st, 2011

Mike says –

“We deliberately didn’t organise a game for the last Saturday of the pre-season because we have a large pool of player this term and Sam and I wanted them all to get 90 minutes of continuous football before the season started. As it was one or two were missing and Ali MacKinnon and Rees Smith didn’t last the full game due to a slight strain and a dead leg respectively. The Juniors also have a large pool to choose from this season so Alex gave us a few players to make up the numbers in an end to end 3-3 draw, the blues winning on penalties.  

Tomorrow we play Preston Athletic at the Pennypitt and the team which starts won’t be the same as the team who will start the season at The Vale on Saturday. Danny O’Donnell goes in for an operation to his foot on Wednesday, while Kevin Sivewright and Omar Kader are both away at the weekend so despite being involved against Preston they won’t be about for the start at Innerleithen. David Etale is still out, Stewart Fowlie and Gavin Malin are heading to China for a month and Keith McLeod is soon to get the knife to his tennis ball hernia. Scott Livingstone (I presume you remember him) is also soon due an operation so you can see why we are carrying a larger pool than normal.

Tomorrow Sam and I will put out a competitive team against Stevie and his Preston team and let The Vale take care of itself. It’s fair to say we will use the League Cup section to try everyone out before the serious matter of the league campaign starts. More on game against The Vale later in the week.”

Mike