Queen's Park 0-4 Alloa: Wasps continue high-scoring spell with Hampden win

A REJUVENATED Alloa secured a comfortable 4-0 victory against a confused Queen's Park at Hampden on Saturday.

Still buoyed by last week's 4-1 win against East Fife, the Wasps demonstrated a palpable determination to build some momentum and climb the League One table.

The first twenty minutes saw little threat from either side, in a game whose overall possession was evenly split.

Jon Robertson and Scott Taggart began clearly confident in what proved to an impenetrable defence – providing a solid framework for the Alloa vanguard at the other end.

Early fouls were indicative of what would be a game of interesting slide-tackles, including a particularly bad one from the home side's Adam Cummins. However, the referee was to mostly adopt a let-live policy.

As for early attempts on goal, the game was pretty sober until a shot from Queen's Park's Ciaran Summers got through Alloa's defence in the 21st minute and woke them up.

From here-on-in the Wasps began to raise their game and crafted a superb first goal as Kevin Cawley skilfully played in PJ Crossan to blast it into right hand corner.

The Alloa support went wild for the young forward, who grabbed his second goal is as many games for the Wasps.

The second half saw Alloa dominate and played like a team who knew each other well. Cawley, in particular, turned in an excellent display showcasing his ability to think three, even four moves ahead.

The visitors continued to press and in the 60th minute Crossan found Craig Malcolm who sauntered past dozing defenders and fired home a close-range effort that stunned keeper Wullie Muir. Alloa were certain that last week's high-scoring win wouldn't be a one-off.

Queen's Park strikers just weren't present when needed. Potential attacks were swiftly dealt with by Alloa, who sometimes needed only one man to neutralise a threat.

Only ten minutes after the second goal, Graham comfortably headed the ball home amidst a Queen's Park defence in disarray and without real challenge.

Summers played well for the Spiders but as the game reached the eightieth minute, he just couldn't keep the ball away on his own. This was evident when Meggatt fired at a wide-open net and scored the fourth - Alloa fans going wild with glee.

Alloa manager Jim Goodwin was left delighted with the performance and thought his side played well from start to finish.

He told Advertiser Sport: "I thought it was a really professional performance. People will probably look at the score line and think it was a walk in the park but Gus [MacPherson's] players are organised and we knew we had to be at our best no matter what.

"I like playing with two strikers on top, but 4-2-3-1 is best right now because of the players we have available. We used that same strategy in our win against East Fife last week and I decided to keep it.

"We've got lots of bodies working together well and you can see we're a fine football team. We encourage the players to be positive and direct.

"I'm not a very critical manager, I want my players to play in the right areas. Players do make mistakes but they know I won't be on to them like a tonne of bricks."

Alloa striker PJ Crossan, currently on loan from Celtic, added: "The position I play right now suits me. I feel I can get good runs on goal and make things happen. I want to get as close to the goal as possible and the team structure is helping that.

"The next match [against Airdrie at home] will be another hard game but we'll concentrate on getting results."