Elgin City visit League 2 promotion chasers Annan Athletic without captain Euan Spark whose knee injury is set to end his season
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ELGIN City have lost club captain Euan Spark to injury for the rest of the season.
The defender has missed chunks of his team’s campaign and only returned to the side as a sub in last Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Forfar.
But as luck would have it, Spark sustained a bad knee injury only minutes after coming on and has been ruled out for six weeks.
City boss Gavin Price is glad that he took in defensive cover in recent weeks by signing former Hibs stopper Kane O’Connor and taking in Jevan Anderson on loan from Cove Rangers.
Price is also happy with his team’s revival after a run of five consecutive defeats.
And he hopes it continues when his team makes the long trip south to take on second-placed Annan Athletic today.
Price will again be joined by former manager Jim Weir who has returned to the club until the end of the season as part of the backroom staff.
The Black and Whites more than held their own against a Forfar side heading for the promotion play-offs, to build on the previous week’s 3-1 win against Stirling Albion.
“It was great to back up a good performance against Stirling with a very good display again.,” Price said.
“It was important to keep a sense of momentum going at this stage of the season.”
City will need that momentum tomorrow at Annan, who have already defeated them three times this season.
“They are hard to play against and in our home games we’ve been hit by that sucker punch of losing the first goal which makes it hard to get back into,” said Price.
“It is going to be a hard slog - but so was Forfar and we got a positive result there so we will look to do the same at Annan.
"It’s just taking each game, eight games left and we’ve got to try and get anything we can in each game, concentrate on that.
"Hopefully we can get something out of this game at Annan and take that into the next game (against Kelty).
"It’s been good in the last two games and we should take confidence from that.
"We are looking more potent, we are creating chances and I know we didn't score on Saturday but we’ve created reasonable chances so we will look to do the same on Saturday."
City keeper Daniel Hoban has held the number one jersey in recent weeks because of work commitments limiting Thomas McHale’s availability for games.
Hoban earned his place in the SPFL team of the week after making some good saves at Forfar, but Price pointed out that it was Forfar goalie Marc McCallum who was awarded the man of the match at Station Park, signifying that he was also kept busy.
“Marc had a couple of unbelievable saves.But Daniel was excellent and he’s got better with every game and took his chance.
“Thomas has been out with his work commitments and there’s never been much between the two of them throughout the season, which is a healthy situation.
McHale, who missed out due to Covid issues, and Ross Draper will rejoin the squad for the Annan trip.
