Eric Kinder on the Annan friendly
Head of youth Eric Kinder gave us his reaction to the emphatic victory over Annan Athletic on Tuesday night.
He said: "We were supposed to play St Mirren under-19s, which obviously would have been a better game for us, but because of the situation with football in Scotland at the moment St Mirren didn’t know whether they were starting their league programme this week or next week.
That meant they had to cancel the game and Annan came in to fill it for us at the last moment.
We thought we were going to play their reserve side, which would have been a decent game for us, but as it turned out we played their under-17 team.
It was very one-sided but it didn't do us any harm. It will give us great confidence going into Saturday’s league game against Accrington, but I would probably have liked to have had a harder game. Having said that, I appreciate what Annan have done. They have helped us out and we'll take that any day of the week.
We had a few missing again - Declan Watson was ill and Jack Lynch is still injured - and then we lost three for the right reasons with Tom Berwick making his debut for the first team and Kyle Dempsey and Bradley Staunch going on the bench.
It didn't affect us in this one though and we had Alex Salmon back in a different role. He was at the top of a three-man midfield and he was the best player on the pitch by a million miles. He got on the ball and he was comfortable, and he has to remember he's a good player. He just gets ahead of himself at times and he can come over as a little bit arrogant, but the kid can play football, there is no doubt about that.
Pre-season has been tough, but I wanted that. We've won our first and last game and we've drawn two and lost a couple. The two draws were against Celtic Nation and Penrith who are tough Northern League sides, then Blackburn Rovers were quality and we had a couple of trialists in who couldn’t cope with it, so that one went against us.
It has all been very worthwhile, which is the important thing, and we're ready to go now."
Goals - Peel (58, 61, 73, 76), Brough (49, 64), Clarey - (27, 44), Salmon (15, 77).
United - Parker (Brass 16), Gwinnutt, Minor, Morse (McEvoy 46), Chisholm, Dixon, Thomson, Salmon, Clarey, Peel, Brough.
