Cove Rangers have had an inconsistent start to their first ever season in the SPFL Championship, but impressive home form has kept them above the bottom two relegation spots. The transformation from League One to Championship football hasn’t been smooth, with a managerial change and the loss of star full-back Harry Milne to Partick Thistle.
New manager Jim McIntyre filled the boots left by Paul Hartley who after guiding Cove to a title-winning campaign made to move to English League Two outfit Hartlepool Town. This stint was unsuccessful however as he was sacked in September. Meanwhile at Balmoral Stadium, after a tricky start to the season seeing them only pick up one win from the opening seven Cove have learned to play to their strengths.
The season-long loan signing of Max Johnston from Motherwell looks to be a great piece of business. Before the Scotland U21 international made his move, Cieran Dunne was being played there out of position and struggled defensively. Since then, Johnston has been part of a defence that has looked like more of a cohesive unit, perhaps also due to the signing of central defender Jack Sanders from Kilmarnock.
One player that has heavily featured for the Toonsers in the recent weeks is winger Luis Longstaff. The Englishman had to wait for his opportunity in the starting line-up with Robbie Leitch and Fraser Fyvie initially preferred to him. However, Longstaff finally got his start in a rotated side against Raith Rovers in the SPFL Trust Trophy and done enough to stay in the side for the following league game against Arbroath which was a 2-0 victory. Since then he has started 8 of the next 9 games and has linked up well with Max Johnston down the right side.
Speaking to the 21-year-old after Cove’s 2-0 victory against Queen’s Park earlier this month, he boasted about the club’s from at the Balmoral. “Our form at home has been solid this year so when we went 1-0 up, I thought if we stayed on top of the game we could see it out. Then when the second goal came, we didn’t give them a sniff at all and it was pretty comfortable in the end.”
In this specific game Longstaff picked up an assist for Connor Scully’s first goal of the evening, the Englishman floated a cross into the middle of the box where Scully poked home in the second minute.
One area of Cove’s play that has been impressive this season is goalscoring. They have scored the most amount of goals of any of the bottom six sides with 24 from 16 games. This has been in part due to the 12 combined goals of Connor Scully and Mitch Megginson, Scully’s 7 goals makes him the 3rd highest scorer in the league which is impressive when you consider the fact he is a central midfielder. “You want to know if you’re putting good balls in the box nine times out of ten they’ll end up in the back of the net. There’s always the threat there with Scully and Megginson especially” Longstaff added.
Longstaff signed for Cove this summer following his release from Liverpool where he progressed from their prestigious academy. However, last season he would have been playing against Cove for Queen’s Park on loan. Longstaff was a key part of the Spiders side who gained promotion to the Championship last season from the play-offs, scoring 4 goals in 31 appearances.
Despite admitting that he enjoyed his time at Queen’s Park last season, he said “I’m more than happy to be here at Cove. We have great ambition if you look at the progress the club has made over the last few years, that’s what brought me here it’s not just a club happy to be around the bottom of the table we want to push on for the playoffs and there’s no reason we can’t do that.”
Perhaps the main reason why Cove sit lowly at 8th in the table is because of their away form. They are currently the only team in the league to not win an away game. If you take this into account alongside their leaky defence conceding 27 goals in 16 – only bottom placed Hamilton and Partick Thistle have conceded more – then you can see where the issue lies.
The seasons issues were amplified in the 4-4 draw away to the Accies at the end of October. Cove were 37 minutes away from their first away win of the season when they blew a 4-1 lead in a crucial bottom of the table clash. Reflecting on the game, Longstaff pointed out “when you look at the table we could have been four or five points clear of Hamilton and Arbroath at the bottom if we held on, so it felt like a defeat instead of a point gained. That’s why it was so important to win now, getting three points and putting pressure on them to keep pace.”
Despite lofty player ambitions, boss Jim McIntyre has always said that the main objective for the Toonsers this season must be staying in the division. Cove fans will be hoping to do this by picking up as many home wins as possible, but they will have to start picking up more points on the road to separate themselves from the bottom.
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