Albion Rovers boss hopes thumping cup win can be catalyst for league improvement

Sandy Clark hopes their 8-0 annihilation of Fauldhouse United in the South Challenge Cup can be just the tonic to sort their stuttering form.

The Monklands men had gone four games without a win until Saturday’s stroll against United, having lost Lowland League matches to Broxburn and Bo’ness United before crashing out of the SPFL Trust Trophy in midweek to league rivals Cowdenbeath in a battling 4-3 defeat.

But Rovers were at the races in West Lothian as a brace from new signing Peter Mendy and Michael Paton, plus strikes from Adam McMillan, Nathan Brown, Marcus Lavery and Barry Duncan saw them ease into the second round.

And Clark hopes it sets them up well for a tough double-header in the league this week against Tranent tonight and Linlithgow Rose on Saturday.

He said: “It was a game where we are expected to win, playing a team three leagues below us, but from what we aimed for at the start of the game, it worked out really well.

“We have had some poor results recently but I can’t criticise the guys for their effort. It has just been about trying to eliminate mistakes and be a little bit sharper with our passing and movement. We did that on Saturday.

“We controlled the game and scored a lot of goals but, more importantly, with all the games we have been playing it allowed us to get other players minutes on the pitch.

“We’ve got two hard away games coming up now. Tranent and Linlithgow will be two of the tougher teams in the league so this is a good performance to take into those games and, hopefully, we take a bit of confidence from it.

“The shape that we used was good and we can go into the games with belief we can do well in those games.”

Clark was also delighted to see Mendy get on the scoresheet. The striker has