Manager Dougie Samuel heaps praise on Spartans players where others don't
Spartans boss Dougie Samuel insists his players don't receive the credit their endeavours warrant this season.
The Capital outfit have been in fantastic form in both league and cup, leading the way in League Two for the vast majority of the campaign and reaching the fifth round of the Scottish Cup before exiting the competition to Premiership Dundee United on Tuesday night.
Spartans were knocked off the summit of Scottish football's fourth tier the same evening, East Kilbride's emphatic 6-1 victory at Elgin seeing Mick Kennedy's side assume a two-point lead at the top, although the Ainslie Park club have played two games fewer than their rivals.
And Samuel, who recently celebrated a special milestone reaching 5,000 days at the helm, says his squad's exertions have flown under the radar.
Spartans certainly had 10-man Dundee United under the cosh at Tannadice as they sought a late equaliser, Mark Stowe having reduced the deficit to 2-1 with 12 minutes left on the clock. However, the hosts stood firm to earn a trip to Premiership rivals Falkirk in the quarter-finals.
Samuel and his players can now fully focus on their aspiration of ending the 2025/2026 season as League Two champions.
"I hope our performance on Tuesday means the players will get some credit," he said. "I think it's long overdue and they deserve it. They've also been in the top two in League Two every week of the season bar one after matchday two.
"But nobody seems to want to acknowledge or comment on that. It's probably because I do very little social media and I don't talk about the players often enough. But I talk about our performances.
"So I take a bit of responsibility for that. We've got enough belief and enough confidence and crucially enough good people. Good experience, good ability.
"I thought the players were fantastic on Tuesday night. I think that you go there hoping to do yourself justice and earn the respect of everybody that's at the game. I always say that it's about scoring a meaningful goal in these cup games and we certainly scored a meaningful goal because you could feel the atmosphere in the stadium change in an instant.
"It perhaps gave us a little bit more belief and I'm just hugely proud of the players. The players gave me and the club everything and do remember that a lot of them were working on the morning of the game.
"So we just need to take the confidence, not the result, but the confidence from the game that you know that you can go and compete with a side like Dundee United."