Edinburgh City boss: My Citizens won't be caving in

James McDonaugh is adamant that negativity will not enter the Edinburgh City dressing-room after last weekend’s defeat by title rivals Cove Rangers.

The concession of a late winner in a tightly-contested showdown in Aberdeenshire left the Ainslie Park men six points adrift of the leaders with 12 games remaining.

McDonaugh insists there is still plenty time for things to change at the top. “They’ve beaten us twice and we’ve beaten them once and we’ve still to play them at home,” stressed McDonaugh ahead of tomorrow’s home clash with Brechin City. “I still feel there’s a lot of football to be played. It would have been easier if we were level on points but there’s still a third of the season to go – there’s still 36 points up for grabs.

“It’s not hard to lift these boys after last weekend because they’re a good bunch. I don’t think we’ve lost two games in a row in the league so we’ve just got to show our character once again and finish the season as strongly as we can, whether that takes us top or not.

“If it’s the play-offs we go into, we’ll try and win the play-offs. We don’t want to give up on the title because, for example, if they were to lose this weekend and we win, its back to three points.

“Anything can happen in the run-in to a season. I fully expect us to get beat again at some point and I also expect Cove to lose again at some point. It’s just about trying to reduce the margin if we can and taking the season as far as we can.”

City are one of only five teams in Scotland to hit the 50-point landmark so far – Celtic, Rangers, Dundee United and Cove are the others. McDonaugh believes his side have had an excellent season far, regardless of the fact they are trailing the leaders.

The manager pointed out that his team have had to overcome some notable adversity this term, such as the enforced retirement of their captain Josh Walker, the fact he has had to use seven different goalkeepers and has seen last season’s top scorer Blair Henderson spend most of the campaign battling injury.

“I don’t think we’ve had the credit we deserve for being so close to Cove,” he said. “I’ve never said we’re going to win the league but I’ve always been confident in my players. I’ve always said we’d try our best and we’ve certainly done that.

“We’ve suffered a few surprises over the course of the season with Josh retiring, Allan Martin leaving us out of the blue in January to go to the Philippines, Blair being out for a number of games. It just shows the strength of the character in the whole squad that we’ve been able to deal with all of that.”