Airdrie boss Ian Murray says he’s on the best run of his managerial career after claiming back-to-back manager of the month awards.
But he admits he would swap it all to lift the League One trophy next month.
The Diamonds are on a tremendous 12-game unbeaten run with eight wins and four draws keeping them on Cove’s coattails at the top of the table.
That has helped Murray pick up prizes in January and now February, but it’s the one at the end of the season he really craves.
To get there, Airdrie need to overturn a five-point deficit and Murray wants his side to keep the run going ahead of a title-defining clash at home to Cove on March 26.
After picking up his prize, he said: “These awards are nice to get for myself, for the staff and for the players because it’s recognition of their work more than anything.
“But we’d swap everything for the big one at the end of the season.
“These [manager] awards certainly help and put you in a position to challenge for the bigger ones – and that’s our aim now. The stage of the season we are at, we’d be foolish to say we aren’t trying to do that [win the league] because we are.
“We are just coming up against an exceptional Cove team who are also on a fantastic run. That’s 18 games unbeaten for them.
“Both teams, with the runs they are on, would expect to be top of the league by some distance.
“Cove will be sitting there thinking: how is the league not won?”But that’s how consistent both teams have been.
”We’ve still got to play each other again and if we can keep within a distance of them for that game, that would be great.
”When that game comes along we’ll need to win that one to have any chance. It’s in Cove’s hands at the moment, but there’s a long way to go in a short space of time.”
He added: “I’ve not had as good a run as this. It was tough at Dumbarton being part-time in the Championship, which is a really hard league, and things never really got going at St Mirren.
“It’s as good a run as I’ve had and I imagine as good as Airdrie have had for a number of years, so full credit to the players for that.”
Airdrie beat Alloa 2-0 at the weekend and now head to fifth-place Falkirk on Saturday aiming to keep the pressure on.
Murray said: “If we keep winning like we did on Saturday and we keep that work rate up, I don’t see why we can’t go and win a few more games.”
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