Rae fired up for a crack at Spartans

Jim RAE, who scored many an important goal for Spartans in his time with the Ainslie Park outfit, is now plotting their downfall in the second round of the SFA South Region Challenge Cup in his role as assistant manager of Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale.

With manager Mark Lamb on holiday, Rae was in charge last weekend when they beat Leith Athletic 3-2.

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“Leith are a very good side and we were probably fortunate as a draw would have been a fair result,” said Rae. “I know that Spartans will attack us for basically the entire 90 minutes and we will have to be on our toes. We will need to play to the absolute 100 per cent of our capabilities and hope that Spartans are off the pace and a few per cent down.

“Results are again proving Spartans are still the team that others must aspire to beat and I know that Sam Lynch and Mike Lawson [Spartans co-managers] will never have a weak team. We have a young squad who are all fighting fit with the exception of Mark Kelly who received a bad head knock a couple of weeks ago, and we are ready for action.

“Hopefully, Spartans might have a wee eye on next week’s Scottish Cup tie against Culter up in Aberdeen.”

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Lothian have signed Craig Fell who was previously with Bonnyrigg Rose and the right-sided player goes into their squad for tomorrow’s cup tie.

Spartans were beaten 3-0 by SFL Second Division side Forfar Athletic in midweek with Lawson saying: “We need to make decisions about which players aged under 21 will feature in next week’s Scottish Cup game so this was a good exercise from which we learned a few things.”

Jack Beesley remains an injury doubt for tomorrow’s game.

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