Management look to get wins in New Year

Apart from a short spell at the start of the year and at the start of the new season, the club has held bottom spot in Ladbrokes League 2 which under the Scottish Professional Football League’s pyramid system, is a perilous existence.

The Blue Brazil ended the year sitting in the relegation play-off spot but at least 2017 finished with the team playing a lot better and the fans will be hoping that new manager Gary Bollan can engineer a recovery which will see the team put together a series of wins which can lift them to safety.

The year opened with a series of indifferent performances and a run of seven successive defeats saw the team stuck to bottom spot and staring the play-off with the Lowland League winners in the face.

Manager Liam Fox was replaced by Gary Locke in a bid to sort things out and it had instant success with a win at Berwick and the team put together a run of results which saw them catch up the other strugglers in the table.

They went into the last game of the season at Elgin needing a win and results elsewhere to go their way, but alas Cowden drew 0-0 and a play-off against East Kilbride loomed.

Cowdenbeath’s spell of missed penalties continued in the first leg at EK when Kyle Miller saw his spot-kick saved and the second leg arrived with the teams locked at 0-0.

It was another close tie but Cowden had chances to put their league status safe but missed them and the game ended at 1-1 and alas it was on to penalties.

The team turned their previous penalty form on its head and won 5-3 to keep their place in the SPFL.

Mr Locke and his assistant Billy Brown went about trying to rebuild the squad and aware of the goal scoring problem recruited Josh Morris, who was one of the top scorers in the previous term’s Lowland League, and Ryan Connelly, a bright front prospect came through the youth ranks and in the pre-season and Betfred Cup games things did look promising.

However, before the league programme started Mr Locke left to take up a role with Hearts and Billy Brown accepted the offer of the manager’s position.

And with four points from their first two games things were looking good, but that was when a severe goal drought struck. They lost a series of games 1-0 and it eventually plunged them to the foot of the table.

Mr Brown opted to stand aside and Gary Bollan was appointed boss and he started with three draws but goals were still at a premium.

Indeed, the last home game of the year against Stenhousemuir underlined the problems. Cowdenbeath had enough chances to be three up at the interval but scored only once and ended up hanging on for a draw.

So Mr Bollan, who has stressed that he feels that the squad is good enough to get the results to move up the table with the addition of a couple of new faces to strengthen the Cowdenbeath challenge.

He said: “The players have shown me that there is a lot of quality in the dressing room but we certainly need to start converting more of our chances.

“If we can do that I believe we can get the results we need to seriously improve our position.”