Vale of Leithen hit for six by East Lothian visitors as injury woes continue

Vale of Leithen on the defensive against Musselburgh Athletic on Saturday (Photo: Alwyn Johnston)

Life isn’t about to get any easier for them either as they’re away to Crossgates Primrose this coming Saturday, their Fife hosts being 12 league places and 23 points better off than them.

The Borderers go into that game, kicking off at 2pm, with three points from 13 matches, still awaiting their second win of the season.

Musselburgh’s scorers at Victoria Park in Innerleithen at the weekend were Nathan Evans on 16 minutes, Jackson Barker a minute later, Russell Cairns just ahead of half-time and two minutes after the restart, Ben Weekes on 48 minutes and Evans again on 59.

Vale of Leithen interim manager Joe Murray watching Saturday's 6-0 defeat (Pic: Alwyn Johnston)

Vale’s target for the coming campaign is to avoid successive relegations after dropping out of the Scottish Lowland Football League in the summer, according to general manager Bobby Craigie, and with over half of the season still to go and more than 50 points to play for, he’s optimistic that they can manage that.

They’ve got a three-week break coming up after this weekend and Craigie’s hoping that will give them the respite they need to get new players in to help them get over their current injury crisis and also allow interim manager Joe Murray a bit of time to settle in following his predecessor Michael Wilson’s departure in mid-October.

“Our target this season was always staying up and there’s still a wee way to go,” he said.

“We’re realistic and we know that we can’t compete with the majority of teams in our league, just because their budgets are way, way ahead of what ours is.

Vale of Leithen's Eusebio Mendes getting away from Musselburgh Athletic captain Craig Stevenson (Pic: Alwyn Johnston)

“To be honest, we’re looking forward to the break to see if we can sort out some players.

“We’re looking for new players all the time. It’s just very hard to get them in.”

Looking back over Saturday’s match, he added: “It was very hard because we lost our goalkeeper, Lewis Sanderson, after ten minutes. He had to go off and our other goalkeeper’s injured too so we had to put an outfield player, Conor Barclay, in goals for about 80 minutes and the game was basically finished not long into the second half.

“Two of our players had got injured during the week as well. We’ve been struggling with injuries all season.”