PREVIEW | Saints v Brechin City
First Team

PREVIEW | Saints v Brechin City

23rd July 2019

Tuesday 23 July 2019

Saints welcome Brechin City to McDiarmid Park tomorrow night in the penultimate fixture of the Betfred Cup Group Stage.

Following two defeats from the opening two matches against Montrose and Ross County, Tommy Wright's men can no longer progress to the last 16 of the competition but will be looking to register their first competitive victory of the new campaign.

Wednesday's opponents Brechin City were relegated last season and the Glebe Park outfit will be playing in Ladbrokes League Two for the 2019/20 season.

Barry Smith's men are yet to score in Group B following 3-0 and 4-0 defeats to Forfar Athletic and Ross County respectively.

Looking ahead to the match, Saints boss Tommy Wright wants his players to use the remaining Group Stage matches as an opportunity to be fully prepared for the trip to Celtic on matchday one of the Ladbrokes Premiership season.

"Unfortunately that's us out the Betfred Cup," the Manager said, "and that's totally down to us with nobody but ourselves to blame.

"There were some positives to take from our performance on Sunday although it wasn't the result that we wanted. I thought we created a lot of chances and I thought we should have been 3 or 4 up before Ross County had even got near us in that first-half.

"Our focus is now on the start of the league campaign and our opener away to Celtic which will obviously be a difficult game. We have two matches before then and I will field strong sides for both fixtures.

"The players are playing for a spot in the team for the beginning of the league season so these are important matches. It's going to be a test of character for the younger lads in the squad and hopefully we can get back to clean sheets and doing the basic things well.

"But also, given that we're the Premiership team and favourites, I'm looking for us to create lots of chances and hopefully score goals in these remaining matches.

"That will be good for our confidence going into the league campaign and as we proved against Ross County we are more than capable of causing problems going forward."

On the injury front, the Manager was able to welcome back a number of his players at the weekend but does have a new injury worry with David Wotherspoon ruled out for a number of weeks.

"It was good to get the injured players back in on Sunday," Tommy said.

"Matty came on earlier than we would have probably wanted on Sunday but he'll start both the Brechin and Forfar games and we'll look to get him two 90 minutes before the Celtic match.

"Unfortunately, David Wotherspoon picked up a knee ligament injury against Ross County and it looks like he's going to be out for 4 to 6 weeks which is a blow.

"So it's good we have players returning but a real shame for David. We've also got Drey making good progress and he's now into his full pre-season training programme.

"Liam Gordon is also progressing well too and hopefully we don't pick up anymore injuries between now and have close to a full squad available for the start of the league campaign."


You can watch the Manager's pre-match interview and also hear from Murray Davidson and Zander Clark ahead of the game by subscribing to Saints TV now.

Click here to access the channel and subscribe.


Tomorrow night's match against Brechin City will be shown LIVE on Saints TV for overseas subscribers with live commentary available to those in the UK/IRE.

Co-commentator tomorrow is former Saints striker and now director Roddy Grant.

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