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Dumfries and Galloway Standard

Queen of the South boss savours SPFL Trust Trophy semi-final win over Cove Rangers

Queen of the South player boss Wullie Gibson savoured a semi-final win at Cove then immediately turned his attention to tomorrow’s home clash with Morton.

The Doonhamers ditched Cove Rangers 1-0 in the SPFL Trust Trophy and Gibson said: “We told the players to enjoy it on the way home and to have the day off on Wednesday, but the final has to be put to one side as we have another huge game, you talk about six pointers.

“We went to Ayr and won last weekend and we had a good result against Cove so we need to build on that. If we can do that then we get closer to Dunfermline, depending on their result, and we also drag Morton back into it.

“They’ve been on a great run, so we know what we are going to get off them. I thought we were in control for long spells at Cappielow before, but they hit us with two late goals.

Aidan Fitzpatrick celebrates his goal. (SNS Group)

“Morton will be strong, they will be direct, they will play long balls and put in long throw-ins, so to a man we have to stand up and be counted but I have no fears about this group.”

Gibson has been working hard on and off the pitch to resurrect the club’s fortunes after a dismal season.

He added: “The first part of the season hasn’t gone well for us but you can see what that means to the boys.

“I don’t know how many of them have played in a cup final but that was the carrot dangled in front of them, to go and get to the final.

“They have but they can’t rest on it, they have to go again on Saturday because if they want to play in the final, they have to keep working hard.”

And reflecting on the midweek triumph Gibson said: “We made hard work of it,

“We knew what we were going to be up against. We set up a different shape to start with, but we thought Cove were enjoying far too much of the game, so we changed it in the second half and I thought we put more pressure on them.

“They passed the ball well, but we limited their chances. It’s 1-0 and we are in a final, you can’t ask for more than that away from home.

Alex Cooper celebrates with the jubilant Queens support at full-time. (SNS Group)

“If you told us we were going to come up here, win 1-0 and keep a clean-sheet against a free-scoring Cove team we would’ve taken that all day long. I keep banging on just how important clean-sheets are and that’s three in a row now so if we keep doing that, we will win more than we will lose.

“We got off to a good start and I thought we deserved the win. Cove might think otherwise because of the possession and they enjoyed more of the ball, but we scored the goal and were well organised and hard to break down.

“In any game the opposition are going to have a spell in it, but I thought we weathered that well and we could’ve had two or three if we were more clinical.”

He added: “I was trying to say to the boys that when we were on the ball we didn’t have to go forward straight away because it was attack, defend, attack, defend, a classic cup tie and we tried to take the sting out of it and slow them down a bit too.

“It was an interesting game against a team who have been flying high in their league, but I was hurting after the last game when they came down to Palmerston and demolished us 3-0. It was a bad night for us, so we had wrongs to put right and I thought we did that.”

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