Edinburgh City boss sets Premiership ambition as Motherwell clash proves valuable learning curve

Motherwell and Edinburgh City in action | SNS Group

Edinburgh City manager Michael McIndoe was left good spirits despite a 3-0 defeat to Motherwell in the opening game of their Premier Sports Cup group stage campaign.

Two headers and a powerful strike from Kofi Balmer, Dan Casey and Stephen O’Donnell meant that the three points were to remain in Lanarkshire. Games against Clyde, Partick Thistle and Montrose are to come next in the section, with Premiership ambitions set for the long haul contrasting against what’s needed for the upcoming League Two campaign.

McIndoe said: “Overall it was a good workout for the guys. The quality did show they were much better than us let’s be honest with ourselves. It was that first goal before half-time that killed us a little bit, we had some momentum up until that point. I can’t have a go at the lads as they put the effort in which I felt was fantastic but the lack of quality showed.

“I do appreciate our guys are probably only 60% fit right now from our pre-season build up but it was interesting to see the difference. I wanted to see the differences as a manager where we are at compared to the Premiership teams.

“We want to be in the Premiership within the next five to 10 years as coaching staff, myself and my team but for now it’s what we can do for Edinburgh City right now. We spoke about it we knew what went wrong in the first-half. We had three in the back, they overloaded us in midfield and we did say we didn’t want to change the shape because we are still trying to develop this shape.

“We have 15 new players. Saturday was only their fifth game together. There are not many teams in the leagues doing that at the moment so that’s why we didn’t want to change it. We aren’t trying to be naïve or disrespectful to Motherwell but we needed to try and learn the formation. We knew what was wrong but we wanted to see if the lads could handle it and for 40 minutes of the first half they did okay.”

Edinburgh City are due to face Clyde at home on Wednesday night where they will be hoping to claim their first three points of the cup charge.