10 best Scottish lower league players this week

September 29, 2015

arbroath andy ryan

10. Tony Ralston (Queen’s Park)

Bino’s manager Stuart McLaren still insists his intention for Stirling Albion is to win League Two, but with the opening quarter of the campaign almost out-the-door and his side sitting second from bottom, he may need to adjust his sights if things don’t improve markedly, and soon. Admittedly, it wasn’t too bad a performance on Saturday against a Queen’s Park team which, at times, rode its luck. The Spiders injury concerns are at last starting to clear and it was the return of on-loan Celtic right-back Tony Ralston which proved decisive. Ralston may only be 16-years old, but his stature and performance levels suggest someone’s made a mistake with his date-of-birth. The energetic Celt is very much an attacking full-back and his match winning goal in the second period summed him up, controlling a goal-kick and taking it for a spin before squeezing it past Wallace Smith from the narrowest of angles. He was a nuisance to the ninth placed title-challengers all game and his return from injury should help to sustain Queen’s excellent start to the season.

9. Andrew Barrowman (Albion Rovers)

It says much about the ‘Vers start to the season that victory next week over the much-hyped Dunfermline team could see Darren Young’s side leapfrog the Pars in the table. Okay, I may have glossed over the fact Albion Rovers would need to win by 10 clear goals, but you get the gist. Last season’s League Two champions weren’t really fancied to cause too may ripples in the League One pond this time around, but Saturday’s 2-0 win over Stenhousemuir was already their fourth victory of the campaign. Andrew Barrowman arrived at Cliftonhill with something of a reputation during the summer, but he’d failed to live up to it until Saturday, when his two fine headed efforts sealed all three points for Young’s team, who now sit in fifth place, level on points with Forfar and Airdrieonians. Only a double-digit win over Dunfermline next week stands between Albion Rovers and a play-off spot.

8. Mark McGuigan (Stranraer)

Both Stranraer and Forfar have slipped below the standards they’ve been used to recently. Forfar’s malaise has come about in the last month, trundling down from first to fourth, after just one win in five league fixtures. Stranraer’s travails appear more concerning, with a serious lack of goals afflicting them this term under new manager Brian Reid. Only Alloa and those goal scoring incompetents Partick Thistle have managed fewer, so Saturday’s 2-1 win over Forfar was a breath of fresh air for the Blues, lifting them above Cowdenbeath and into eighth. Mark “M&M” McGuigan had the biggest say on the matter, exploiting some weak defending from Michael Travis and banjoing in the first-half opener, before winning a penalty in the second-half from which Stranraer took an unassailable lead. While Stranraer will now look to build some momentum, Forfar have a difficult looking run of fixtures coming up, including games against Ayr United and Dunfermline. Dick Campbell may be looking miserable in post-match interviews for the foreseeable future.

marc mcguigan goal

7. David Bates (Brechin City)

Cowdenbeath may be pretty poor at professional football at the moment, but there’s a few aspects of the game which they still absolutely excel at: missing penalties and having players dismissed. They managed to reach new, previously unscaled heights on these matters against Brechin City at the weekend, by totting up both within 15 seconds of each other, when Robbie Buchanan saw his spot-kick saved and Dean Brett was ordered off moments later. By that stage, Cowden were already 2-0 down, with the opener coming via on-loan central defender David Bates, who somewhat improbably bundled the ball home with an impromptu bicycle-kick after a mistake from goalkeeper Jamie Sneddon. The arrival of Bates from Raith Rovers has helped to stem the plethora of goals Brechin were conceding on a weekly basis, and on Saturday especially, he dealt comfortably with Cowdenbeath’s repetitious and monotonous punts up-field as Brechin secured their first clean sheet of the season, and their second consecutive win.

brechin bates

6. Jim Goodwin (St. Mirren)

With his red apparel and overtly evil-looking facial hair, there was a touch of Ming the Merciless about Jim Goodwin on Saturday, although unlike his nefarious look-a-like, who struggled against Flash Gordon and Prince Voltan on the planet Mongo, Goodwin found things plain sailing at Easter Road against Hibernian. His manager, Ian Murray, was gushing and enthusiastic about the grizzled veteran’s performance afterwards, although he did comment that he understood that Goodwin would be likely to play just 25 games this season, rather than 36. It’s unclear if Murray expects Goodwin to miss those 11 games through suspension, fitness, or because he’ll be elsewhere in the galaxy trying to destroy it. The 1-1 draw was a far better point for the Buddies than it was for Hibs, who now reside 11 points behind Rangers in a rather lop-sided looking Championship race.

5. Lewis Toshney (Raith Rovers)

There’s few things Liverpool fans enjoy more than lustily belting out their phlegmy ditty, “We all dream of a team of Carraghers,” which is all well and good, but let’s face it, a team consisting of 11 Jamie Carraghers would be shite. Eleven players running around, flinging themselves into challenges, before picking themselves up and inexplicably pointing for no discernible reason. Brave and stout at the back, they’d be rubbish up-front, and would ultimately become undone by one of the Carraghers turning a cross into his own net. What a dreadful idea. However, a team comprising of Lewis Toshneys and Kyle Benedictuses; now we’re talking. Not only have the two centre-halves contributed to the club keeping four-out-of-four clean sheets at Stark’s Park, they’ve also produced as many goals as Rovers forward line of Craig Wighton, Mark Stewart and Jon Daly. The two combined in the second-half to provide the one and only goal in a rather forgettable match when Benedictus rattled the crossbar with a header and Toshney nodded in the rebound. The challenge now, is how to shoehorn both their names into a song.

raith toshney goal

4. Liam Buchanan (Livingston)

These are bleak times for Alloa Athletic and Danny Lennon. Saturday’s 3-0 defeat to Livingston didn’t just see them slump to the foot of the table, they were outclassed against a side who, until the weekend, had only managed to accumulate one point all season. Lennon’s chopping and changing of his back-four indicates he’s yet to work out which set-up he thinks will work best, but after shipping 19 goals in eight games, he must at least have a hint of what doesn’t. Not only are the Wasps leaky at the back, they’re also toothless up-front, and it must have been difficult to watch two players who performed so well for them last season, in Ben Gordon and Liam Buchanan, looking adept for Livingston on Saturday. Buchanan hasn’t had the best of starts to his season, but he doubled his tally for the campaign to four, with his brace featuring an exquisite opener after 22 minutes. The one positive for the Alloa fans is at least their rank-rottenness means they won’t have to listen to their goal music, the theme tune to A-Team, particularly often this season.

3. Andy Ryan (Arbroath)

You may not remember it, but throughout the 1980’s and early part of the 1990’s, Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves presented a topical football show called Saint and Greavsie. Basically, imagine Fletch and Sav, but with fewer irritating pricks. Each week, after discussing a Norwich comeback or a clip of a Bundesliga goalie scoring an own-goal, Jimmy would utter the line “It’s a funny old game” before Ian laughed awkwardly. It was great TV. Lower league Scottish football was hardly a staple of the show, but if it were, then Jimmy’s catchphrase would be more than applicable to Arbroath, a side who, in the space of three weeks, have went from potential Highland League bums to glittering, promotion-chasing all-stars. They eviscerated a wretched looking East Stirlingshire side on Saturday, with Andy Ryan scoring twice and winning a penalty during a 4-0 win, which could easily have ended up six or seven in an entirely one-sided affair. After a steady start, it’s East Stirling who now appear to be in a bit of a to-do, while in Arbroath, a man reeking of smoked fish, is embarrassed and bitterly regretting his decision to start a Tod Lumsden Out thread on Pie and Bovril.

arbroath andy ryan shire

2. Nathan Austin (East Fife)

The leadership of League Two has changed hands more often than a particularly scabby fiver, and it did so again at the weekend after East Fife proved to be extremely troublesome guests for Paul Hegarty’s Montrose at Links Park. Nathan Austin rattled in his sixth, seventh and eighth goals of a productive campaign, as his trio helped the Fife to a 4-1 win. His efforts were more scruffy than glorious, but they demonstrated his attributes of pace, persistence and trickery, as he made the return trip back to Fife with the match-ball perched under his oxter. Montrose’s form continues to be patchy, but they look to have enough about them to avoid the dreaded play-off spot which they dwelled in for the majority of last season. Up the other end it’ll no-doubt be someone else’s turn to hold the scabby fiver next week.

east fife nathan austin v montrose

1. Martyn Waghorn (Rangers)

Some idiot (myself) thought that after three fairly so-so performances Rangers were just starting to deflate a smidgen. Some dumb shmuck (me again) even thought that the gallant Greenock Morton could have got up in their grill and rattled some cages on Sunday. Instead, the Ibrox Indomitables were 3-0 up at half-time after rolling over the top of Duffy’s Dismals in a largely one-sided contest. It was never in doubt after Martyn Waghorn converted his 1,483rd penalty of the season, and while he’s been knocking on the door of a hat-trick several times already this campaign, he blootered it clean off its hinges at the weekend, completing the rout with his third, and Rangers fourth of their 4-0 win. Waghorn’s accumulation of goals has seen him compared to Marco Negri, but unlike the hairy, huffy Italian sour-puss, he’ll be hoping to avoid having his face mangled whilst “playing squash.”

rangers waghorn morton

 

 

 

Written by Shaughan McGuigan (@ShaughanM)

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