James McDonaugh hails Edinburgh City side after 'great' start to League Two campaign

Edinburgh City boss James McDonaugh couldn’t speak highly enough of his players after their opening day 5-1 thrashing of Brechin City.

James McDonaugh felt his Edinburgh City side could have won by more goals than the 5-1 scoreline

The Citizens got their SPFL League Two campaign off to a flyer at Glebe Park, Conrad Balatoni, Liam Brown, Blair Henderson, Josh Campbell and Danny Jardine all on target for McDonaugh’s men.

The only jot on the report card from Angus was a Martin Scott effort for the hosts three minutes after the half-time interval.

Other than that, it was a routine day at the office for the Capital outfit who made short work of their opponents, Balatoni heading in the opener from skipper Craig Thomson’s cross six minutes before the break.

Brown netted his first goal in a black and white jersey two minutes after the restart before Scott reduced the arrears for the home side just 60 seconds later.

But that was as good as it got for Mark Wilson’s players as Henderson restored the visitors’ two-goal lead from the penalty spot in the 55th minute following Kieran Inglis' foul on Danny Handling.

And a fine afternoon’s work was completed when Campbell fired home from 20 yards and substitute Jardine netted a fifth with his first touch.

“We showed our intent from the first whistle as we had a shot at goal within the first ten seconds,” McDonaugh said. “We conceded a scrappy goal but I said to the guys afterwards that if you’re going to concede one then go and score five, so it’s a great start for us.

“We’ve played against Premiership and Championship teams recently in the Betfred Cup and have scored against those sides so there are goals in this team.

“I watched the game back yesterday morning and to be honest we could have scored a few more than we did.

“We’ve got some real strength to the squad and we’re going to need that going forward. We just need to make sure we keep them all healthy.”

City are the early leaders on goal difference and McDonaugh quipped: “It would be good if they could just end the season now! We want to push as much as we can. We talked about having a good start as this time last year we were coming off the back of a 5-0 defeat to Cove and we recovered from that brilliantly.

“We’ve now got two home games coming up against Cowdenbeath and Elgin so we need to take advantage of that.”

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