Kevin Haynes says Berwick Rangers are ready to put the cat among the pigeons when they face Clydebank
Berwick Rangers boss Kevin Haynes hopes his side can ‘set a cat amongst the pigeons’ when Clydebank visit Shielfield Park this weekend.
The third-placed Lowland League promotion chasers head down to the border for the re-arranged fixture on the back of a 3-1 defeat at Celtic B – and Haynes said Rangers will be putting in the hard graft ahead of it.
“We’ve just got to keep working hard. We’re training Tuesday and Thursday, and after that defeat I expect they’ll be very much like a wounded animal,” he told BRTV.
“It’s a difficult opposition but, and I’ve said it multiple times, we can compete with anyone; we’ve shown we can compete with anybody and we just need to go and believe that we can go and compete with Clydebank.”
The black and gold secured three points at basement side East Stirlingshire with three second half strikes.
Mikey Mbewe came off the bench and tucked away the opener five minutes after the break when Ben McCrystal set him up.
McCrystal got on the scoresheet himself six minutes later when he hit one into the top corner from the edge of the box and Mbewe celebrated putting away the third when Berwick moved smartly up the pitch and he applied the decisive finish in the 75th minute.
“There was a lot of good interlinking play, I felt. You see that on the third goal. We win the ball back defending down near our own corner flag and manage to get it to the penalty spot for a tap-in,” continued Haynes.
“We played pretty well and I felt we controlled the game pretty well after the first half an hour.
“I thought East Stirling started the game really well, they knocked the ball about and they created little half chances, nothing that really scared us too much, but we had to get to grips with that, we had to control the game a bit more, which we did, and then obviously we run away with it in the second half.”
‘Shire pulled one back with 10 minutes to go as unlucky Joe Ellison put into his own goal.
“We were just a wee bit sloppy for the goal,” admitted Haynes.
“The East Stirling player has skipped through two kind-of soft tackles – if that’s the case and we’re not getting a good tackle in we’ve then got to foul him. We’ve got to stop the play and then defend the free kick from there.
“We’ve just got to be a bit more streetwise.”