Ashley Grimes feels back in the groove with Edinburgh City

Ashley Grimes netted in his comeback against Berwick Rangers on Saturday. Pic: TSPL

A hamstring injury had prevented Grimes from contributing as much as he would’ve liked over the previous six weeks. While disappointed not have take maximum points on his return to action, yet another strike against The Wee Rangers – he’s scored five of his eight goals against them this term – and a point to keep City in eighth position wasn’t the worst outcome.

“I don’t know what it is about Berwick,” he admitted. “Throughout my career, there’s certain clubs I’ve just had a knack of scoring against, so obviously it was nice to continue that, but it’s more important to help the team and get another point on the board.

“It would’ve been really harsh if we’d lost the game. If you look at it overall we could’ve maybe won – we were the ones trying to win, so it’s a bit disappointing but we take the point and move on.

“I’m pretty much back to 100 per cent now. It’s been about six weeks since I got a tear on my hamstring so that was my first start back, but I felt pretty good. It’s great to be back out there.

“The timing was frustrating because I was enjoying a decent spell. We’ve been in good from since the turn of the year and it was a good five or six games before I picked up the injury. It was disappointing but these things happen in football.”

Saturday allowed City to tick another game off, with the situation at the bottom of League Two as it was prior to kick-off. Last week’s 3-0 home loss to Clyde remains their only defeat in six games and this habit of squeezing points out of most matches should see them to safety with the gap at the bottom still ten points.

“Our form’s pretty good and I think we’re fairly high up in the form table,” said Grimes. “Sometimes it’s difficult – there’ll be games when there’s not an awful lot of football played and you just have to dig in and take your point, like we did on Saturday.

“If we’d lost, they’d have overtaken us which we definitely wouldn’t have deserved, so we’ll take that as a positive.”

James McDonaugh’s team will be looking for a modicum of revenge on the Binos this evening after they left Ainslie Park with a point ten days ago thanks to a 95th-minute equaliser. Grimes believes that should act as motivation for him and his teammates to go and get a result.

“I don’t think there’s anything for us to be worried about,” he said. “We need to go there confident. We’re in fairly decent form so we need to try and impose our game on them and see where it takes us.

“There’s no reason whatsoever why we can’t go there and get a result. We were 30 seconds away from beating therm at home a couple of weeks back so we should be going there believing we can put on a positive performance and get a positive result.

“This stage of the season always throws up a few surprises. A couple of teams can’t really buy a win and then they go on a little run. It happens. I’m sure the ones at the top will get a bit twitchy as they’re pushing for the title.

“We’ve just got to keep focusing on ourselves and look after our own results. That’s the main thing.”