Wasps thriving in league title race

Iain Robertson • Published 3 Mar 2010 15:21 0 Comments

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STRIKER Andy Scott celebrates after netting his winner against Peterhead.

ALLOA Athletic manager Allan Maitland says his side are thriving on leading the Division Two title race as he prepares to rotate his squad for a hard run of games.

Saturday's home win against Peterhead stretched the Wasps unbeaten run to nine games and increased their advantage at the top to eight points.

The club now faces two league games a week in March and the Alloa gaffer said he will rotate his squad to deal with the pressures that will put on his part-time players.

He told the Advertiser Sport, "We are in good shape going into a hard run of games, but there is no use playing guys week in week out when I have a full squad at my disposal."

Unbeaten in the league this year, Alloa haven't tasted defeat in the division since mid-November and the manager insists his troops have the belief to keep winning and pile further pressure on the other clubs.

"The team believe in themselves and know we will score goals," said Maitland, "If we lose a goal we know we are capable of going and scoring another one and that has made the difference. The gap is now growing and the pressure is on everybody else now - that's exactly how I would like it to be."

Alloa have the same number of games to play as everyone else for the rest of this month but won't face the same fixture pressures as some other teams next month.

But they will have another date to add after the game they were due to play at Clyde on Tuesday evening was postponed because of a frozen pitch.

Warning

The Wasps won't have to wait long to face the Bully Wee in the league, though, as John 'Cowboy' McCormack's side are Saturday's visitors to Recreation Park.

Clyde have only played three league games in 2010 because of the continual postponements, and have lost all of them, but the Alloa manager is warning his players not to be complacent as he believes the basement boys will come good under John 'Cowboy' McCormack - he just hopes that doesn't begin on Saturday.

McCormack's side are sitting rock bottom of the league on 15 points - eight points behind Arbroath, although they do have three games in hand over the Gayfield club.

Alloa have picked up maximum points in the two games played between the sides this season and will be confident of bagging another win at the weekend.

Next up for the Wasps is a trip to Dumbarton next Tuesday night to take on Jim Chapman's side in yet another rearranged fixture.

The Sons are sitting fifth in the table and very much in the race for a promotion play-off place and despite back to back league defeats will believe they can emulate the 3-1 win they secured over Alloa at the Recs back in October.

But the Wasps are on a high right now and will be looking for a repeat of their opening day victory at the Strathclyde Homes stadium.

Scot Buist was taken off injured against Peterhead and will be a doubt for Saturday.

Meanwhile, Hibernian's youth team keeper Thomas Flynn has signed up at Recreation Park on a month's loan.

Alloa's postponed league game which was due to be played on 20 February at Cowdenbeath has been rescheduled for Tuesday 16 March, kick off 7.45pm.

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