The two form sides in the Championship meet at Gayfield tomorrow as we travel to Angus to take on Arbroath. The Red Lichties have won four and drawn four of their last eight games, while we have won seven and drawn twice in our last 10 across all competitions.
Tomorrow’s fixture will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in both the promotion and relegation battles. We could go second in the table, although that would require us to win by just the 17 goals! The home side could drop as low as 8th with a defeat. Alternatively, a home win would see Arbroath jump to as high as fourth in the table, with Queens dropping no lower than 6th.
The two games between the sides so far this season have ended in draws. On our last visit to Gayfield, James Maxwell gave us a first half lead before Bobby Linn equalised early in the second half. And at Palmerston a Connor Shields double had us two up after the break before two goals in the space of two minutes from Scott Stewart and Thomas O’Brien again secured a point.
Team wise this weekend, new signing Ciaran Dickson goes into the squad.
There was positive news on the goalkeeping front too with Jack Leighfield able to complete the pre-match warm-up against Dunfermline, although Leighfield will face a tough job to take the number one jersey away from Rohan Ferguson who has been in fine form of late.
It remains to be seen how close Connor Shields, Joe McKee or Nortei Nortey are to full fitness, although Dan Pybus will definitely miss out with a hamstring injury.
The hosts will be without long term absentees Gavin Swankie and Luke Donnelly, while Jake Davidson is a doubt. Ex-Doonhamers Dale Hilson and Jack Hamilton are the danger men for Arbroath, along with Ben Williamson in central-midfield, another impressive young player on loan from Rangers.
Manager Allan Johnston is a happy man just now as he looks ahead to the game “It was a difficult start to the game for us last week as Dunfermline had a lot of the ball but they didn’t cause us too many problems and Rohan didn’t have too many saves to make which is pleasing. When you are up against it you have to defend well and we did that. In the second half we were a different team, we got much closer to people, we were again a threat going forward and got another great goal.
We are in a good position right now but we are not going to get carried away. In football you can’t look too far ahead cause when you start doing that it can come back to haunt you.
This week we head to Arbroath who like ourselves have been on a great run of form since the turn of the year. They are always well organised and a difficult side to play so again we know we will have to be at the top of our game to get a result. I have no doubt that previously people would have had Arbroath and ourselves as two teams struggling but we have both dug in and shown the quality we have. However, the last thing we can do is get too complacent, we have to keep building on our recent results and try to keep pushing up the table”.
The game will again be streamed live at the cost of £12.00. You can watch by signing up at
https://arbroathfc.tv/
The match will be online until the evening of Sunday 21st February, so even if you can’t physically sit down and watch the game at 3.00pm, you can still relive the entire 90 minutes at a time that suits you.
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