Elgin City assistant manager Stefan Laird says Peterhead or East Fife should win William Hill League 2 title but Borough Briggs club isn’t out of the race yet
Elgin City have given their play-off hopes a late season surge - but could the Black and Whites muscle in on the title race.
Most see the League 2 championship chase being between leaders Peterhead and East Fife just a point behind, with Edinburgh City and Elgin seven points adrift of the leading pair in third and fourth.
It would take an almighty turnaround to see the men from Borough Briggs return to first place at the finish, yet it has got assistant manager Stefan Laird dreaming of glory.
Certainly his team have hit form at a crucial time, with last Saturday’s hard-fought 1-0 win at Bonnyrigg Rose being City’s third win in a row to build up some solid momentum going into the final straight.
Laird points out that the gap between City and front runners Peterhead, compared to the lead that the Moray club has on the teams chasing fourth spot, is negligible.
And with Elgin by no means certain yet of securing a place in the play-offs, by the same logic they shouldn’t yet be ruled out as title contenders, Laird suggested.
“Even though I know East Fife and Peterhead have sort of both declared that we're all out of the title race and it's down to those two, we'll see how that works out,” he said.
“We've got six points on Spartans (in fifth place), seven points in effect if you count the goal difference - which obviously can change. We also know that Spartans are more than capable of winning every other game.
“So we won't be in the play-offs until we are in them. People are asking if we can get in the play-offs but also saying we're definitely out of the title race, when it’s pretty much the same amount of points either side.
“Peterhead and East Fife should compete for the title. However, we know that they're capable of dropping those points and we're also capable of winning all the games that we've got to play.
“It can go up or down and we won’t get ahead of ourselves. We’re just looking ahead to Saturday against Stirling Albion.”
City managed to defeat one bogey team in Bonnyrigg, where they had lost in each of their last four visits to New Dundas Park.
This weekend they face another thorn in their side in Stirling, who ended the Black and White’s unbeaten home run in the league with a convincing 4-2 success at Borough Briggs in December, then dished out a 3-1 defeat to the Moray club in February at Forthbank.
Stirling still have an outside chance of making the play-offs from sixth spot and Laird knows they will come north on Saturday in determined mood to make it three consecutive successes over Elgin.
“We know how good a side they are. They’ve got a really big squad and a good manager.
“We got a great result down there at the start of the season but in the last game up at our place, they absolutely battered us. We were really poor and they were really good.
“But we’ve got a good record at home and we’re playing well just now. So are they, and I think they know they have to win if they want to get in the play-offs. So we have to be ready for that.”
Laird and manager Allan Hale made their first changes to their starting line-up in their winning run last week at Bonnyrigg, including a last minute alteration.
Lewis Hyde had been down in Glasgow on work duty and stayed in the area overnight to shorten his journey to Edinburgh, until an accident on the M8 held him up and forced the management team to change their intended team.
Brian Cameron dropped to the bench after picking up a knock, while Dylan Gavin was given his first start in months in attack, preferred for his physical presence to Dajon Golding who had scored in the previous week’s win at Spartans.
As it turned out, Golding proved to be the match winner just two minutes after replacing Gavin in the final quarter of the match.
Ryan Sargent’s strike was parried out to super sub Golding to gleefully ram home - video footage suggests the striker was offside when he score the rebound but City were happy to take the lucky break.
“They were excellent on Saturday in a game that was destroyed by the conditions,” said Laird.
“The pitch down there at the best of times is challenging, to say the least, and on Saturday there was a 40, 50 miles-an-hour gust for the majority of the game, so it was a tough one for both teams.
“There was great defending by both teams to deal with the wind. In the last sort of five minutes or so, there was a barrage of corners but the team was picked in order to try and deal with that.
“We were really pleased that, from our coaching point of view, that it worked out, and we got a deserved three points.”
Against Stirling, City will still be without the injured Kane Hester and Kian Leslie while full back Lyall Booth is expected to be missing for another week or two.
Laird revealed that Cameron, Jack Murray, Kyle Girvan and Jake Dolzanski are all carrying knock-on effects from recent injury recoveries, but all four are expected to be in the squad.