Edinburgh City know wins are all that matter now - Scott Shepherd

Scott Shepherd admits Edinburgh City must get back into the winning groove to keep themselves on course for promotion.

The Ainslie Park side have fallen eight points adrift of Cove Rangers at the top of League Two after winning only two of their last six games. A return of only point from their last two games against Cove and Brechin has been particularly damaging to their title bid. They still sit 15 points clear of third-place Cowdenbeath, whom they visit on Saturday. However, Shepherd, who was part of a City side that led the way for a long part of last season before falling short in the play-offs, is mindful of the need to generate some momentum in the closing months of the campaign.

“We’ll not be giving up on the title - the league’s not over until the last day,” said the striker. “We just need to concentrate on ourselves and make sure we’re picking up better results than we have been between now and the end of the season. It’s important that we finish the season in good form because even if we don’t win the title we’ll be looking to go into the play-offs. Teams that are in the play-offs tend to be going in in good form because they’ve had a good season so we need to make sure we finish strongly and have a bit of momentum.”

City appeared to be seizing the initiative in the title race as they won 14 out of 18 league games between the second day of the season up until the 4 January, but since then their form has been patchy.

“We need to get back on track because the last couple of results have obviously been disappointing,” said Shepherd. “We played really well at Cove and definitely deserved more out the game in my opinion but last week against Brechin we just weren’t at it. We’ve taken a step back the way and we need to start winning games again.

“It’s disappointing that we’ve not been able to keep that winning run going that we had over Christmas but it’s very tough to keep winning every week. We’ve just got to do that bit more to get back on track but we’ve got a good group here and I’m sure we’ll do that.”

Shepherd is aware of the need to maintain a sizeable advantage over Cowdenbeath, who currently have two games in hand over City. “Cowdenbeath is a hard place to go and they’re a tough team to play against,” he said. “It’s not always pretty over there. We want to keep the gap as big as possible between ourselves and them.”