Eight goals in four days for Berwick Rangers as pre-season friendly schedule continues
Berwick Rangers continued their pre-season friendly schedule by putting eight goals in the space of four days past fellow Northumbrians Ashington and Stobswood Welfare.
Manager Kevin Haynes’ side got the better of Ashington by 5-0 on Saturday and followed that up by beating Stobswood 3-0 on Tuesday night, both at home at Shielfield Park.
Greg Binnie scored at the double at the weekend, with Mikey Mbewe, Josh O’Connor and Danny Handling also finding the back of the net.
Handling and O’Connor were back on the scoresheet in midweek, accompanied by Jamie Pyper.
Rangers conclude their pre-season itinerary with one last friendly hosting Newcastle Benfield this coming Saturday and that’s a 3pm kick-off.
Haynes, 45, is happy with how their warm-ups – also including a 1-1 draw against Blyth Spartans on Saturday, July 4, and a 4-1 win versus a Falkirk XI three days later, both at home too – are going, telling the club’s Facebook page after Saturday’s game: “I think that friendly today was probably as close to perfect as you’re going to get.
“My only criticism at half-time is that we hadn’t scored enough goals for the chances that we created. I think we had probably five or six proper good chances.
“I thought we were excellent. I really did think we were excellent, and to get a clean sheet was good.
“We were still going at the end. Our fitness levels looked good, our shape was good – I’ve got nothing that I can complain about.”
Looking ahead, he added: “We want to have belief in ourselves and we want to believe that we can do that every Saturday.
“We need to instil that into the players that they can do that every Saturday, and I think we’ve demonstrated that over the course of the time I’ve been here.
“I think the biggest positive that we’ve managed is that we’ve kept the majority of our squad together.
“I think we can get more out of the squad. They’ll stick together. They need to believe that they’re going to win multiple games and score multiple goals and we’ll see where that takes us.
“The guys that we’ve kept make it easy for new guys coming in here. It’s a very good changing room and that’s something we want to protect as a club.
“We need to bring in the right people. That’s been something that we’ve been very conscious of and I feel we’re in a situation where that’s working.”
Rangers begin the coming Scottish Lowland Football League East season away to Dundee’s Lochee United on Saturday, July 25, with kick-off at 3pm.