Revenge his sweet for Edinburgh City boss James McDonaugh

Edinburgh City boss James McDonaugh has revealed Albion Rovers’ pre-match comments played right into the hands of his players as the Citizens ran out 3-1 winners at Cliftonhill.

Alex Harris opened the scoring for Edinburgh City

The visitors found themselves two goals to the good inside the opening seven minutes, Alex Harris finishing off a well-worked move before Danny Handling found the top corner from outside the box.

Declan Byrne did reduce the arrears ten minutes into the second half but Allan Smith sealed the points for the Capital side with nine minutes remaining.

The two sides had met in the Betfred Cup group stages in July with Albion taking a 2-1 win. However, it was comments from manager Kevin Harper in the build-up to Saturday’s clash that didn’t sit well with City.

“We got a wee bit of motivation prior to the game with some poor comments from their end so we just used that,” McDonaugh explained. “We dominated the cup match despite Albion saying they should have won by more. It wasn’t a great thing to say really.

“But we started Saturday brilliantly, the first goal was an exceptional team move and the second was just a brilliant individual goal from Danny. He was excellent and I was joking with him afterwards that he’s rolling back the years. His quality on the ball was outstanding.

“They only had one shot on goal and scored but that’s something we have to bear in mind because 2-0 is always a wee bit precarious. But we kicked on again, the subs made a difference and Allan Smith took his goal well.

“Cove went there earlier on and went 3-0 up but only took a point from the game so we were aware of that. It’s just the whole environment of the place, it’s never changed in 25 years since I played there.

“It’s a good run we’re on, five wins and a draw from our last six games and we’ve had eight different goalscorers in our last four matches so there’s loads of positives.”