With Celtic out of the League Cup after losing to Morton at Parkhead last night, supporters of every team now left in the competition have an added skip in their steps this morning.
The gap between Celtic and the rest is vast throughout the course of a season, but being best of the rest is much closure, particularly in cup competitions.
Stranraer proved this with a fighting performance against Hibs, scoring three times and creating several other good chances, although in the end Pat Fenlon’s men progressed to the quarter final comfortably.
After the game Fenlon praised his own players and also Stranraer’s, but suspected that more criticism will be heading his way following the loss of the three goals.
He said: “We knew that it was going to be a tough game because they beat Ross County in the last round. We were a little bit sloppy at times. We conceded the early goal but we got ourselves back into it and I thought that we played well, especially in the first half.”
“It was a decent game and Stranraer played really well. They scored some decent goals, there were a lot of chances at both ends and the score-line could have been even higher, probably even 7-6 would have been fair.
“There were a lot of attacking players in the team and we created a lot of chances.”
“People criticise us if we are too negative and now we will be criticised for being too attack-minded. We can’t win, can we?”
Meanwhile delighted hat-trick hero Liam Craig savoured the moment, but wants to look forward rather than backwards and insisted that goals will come from every department of the team this year.
“It was my first goal for the club at Easter Road so it is a special moment. It is something I can look back on but for now it’s all about Saturday. We are back to league business and we want to continue this run. That’s six games now and regardless who you are playing, it is still six games unbeaten.”
“We have got goals throughout the team, even looking at the back, with James McPake and Paul Hanlon and big Nelson.
“They are all a threat at set pieces and then you look in the midfield … Robbo has already scored, myself, Zoubir … I think we have goals in us and then there’s Alex Harris and Danny Handling, who aren’t even in the squad and they have goals in them.
“Then there are the strikers, so there are goals in the team and it’s just nice that we are scoring and taking the chances.
“Even on Saturday, I know it was 2-0, but I think it was clear to everyone that it could have been four or five and that would have been a fair result.”
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
