Before our trip just 17 miles down the road to Ferguson Park in the heart of Midothian our Reserves played out a 2-0 win away at Inverness Athletic Reserves on Wednesday 12th; Matthew Cunningham with a well taken shot from 14 yards and unsigned Jimmy Lyons with a back post tap in.
Whitehill Welfare ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehill_Welfare_F.C. ) in IRL have now dropped down to the East of Scotland League. They finishing 12th in 2017/18 and on paper/in our scouts estimation only have one 3-star current ability player. They are currently 9th, with a win, a draw and a loss (3-0 to Gala Fairydean) so we go into the game in good spirits an in a Positive mentality. Its a Wet 14C – in a few months we will be looking back at these balmy September afternoons with a degree of nostalgia as the wind whips of the Firth of Forth.
4-1-4-1 DM wide as per, the only difference to last Saturday is Johnny Devers back into the Mezzala CM role in place of David Churchill (6.6 in the Gala game as a CM A) and Barras dropping to Support duty in the IF role from Attack. Whitehill are playing a 4-4-2, seemingly very slightly asymmetric from a duty standpoint, but we will try and impose our collective will and grind them down.
HT Whitehill Welfare 0 Civil Service Strollers 1 (Devers 6)
Well, what a great start – 6 minutes in a free kick from McCulloch was flicked on to the far post by Mair, and Johnny Devers was on the spot to nod home. The rest of the half felt relatively safe, though our pass completion and possession were down on normal. Hainey had a couple of good chances that he should have put away. I’m taking off Mair, as he’s on a yellow plus we’ve got 4 more games after this in the next 2 weeks so some dutiful subbage will be the order of the day. Barras moves across to his favoured left wing and Faye comes in on the right.
FT Whitehill Welfare 0 Civil Service Strollers 1 (Devers 6) Att 74 (25 Away)
The second half started brightly for the Strollers with Faye looking a handful but on 55 minutes Donaldson pulled off a beautiful save to keep the game 1-0. We gradually piled the pressure on with the Whitehill keeper Jardine pulling off a number of saves. Whitehill barely pressured us after the Donaldson save. McVitie came on for McCulloch, Garden for Hainey and we eased to a 1-0 win, our 3rd 1-0 in 5 league games. Johnny Devers was man of the match with 4 Key passes. We took our possession from 55% to 62% at full time as well, showing our dominance, though it would be nice to convert some more of these into goals though. Faye also impressed when he came on. Nice to see 25 of the CSS Ultras making their way to Rosewell for the game.
Team Cohesion is now Average 🙂 Next up we have a South of Scotland Challenge Cup 2nd Round in 4 days (We are the holders) – A Wednesday at 3pm!!! Obviously a lack of floodlights at their ground, so some players will be needing half-days off work, though its only 5 miles across Western Edinburgh to get to their ground so not a lot of travel. Expect rotation as we have the Scottish Cup tie away in Wick (Basically Norway) on the Saturday – if we get a plum away tie in that comp in a few rounds any financial issues we have currently go away….