After their Fife derby win, Raith Rovers are joint second in the Championship but Ross Millen has warned there is still a long way to go.
Rovers are two points behind Queen’s Park, who they host next week, with a game in hand over the early pace-setters.
Ian Murray’s side were a few people’s pick to challenge Dundee United at the top of the league after some impressive summer business.
That has continued with more recent additions – both Euan Murray and Shaun Byrne more than proved their worth in Saturday’s win – and they have backed it up with results.
🔜 Match highlights at midnight. pic.twitter.com/LYP6sN24Wv
— Raith Rovers Football Club (@RaithRovers) August 26, 2023
Millen has improved the team since his recent return to the but, as far as their ambitions go, he concedes that he is more pessimistic than most – taking lead from his footballing father Andy, now Dougie Imrie’s assistant at Morton.
Ross Millen: Raith Rovers must ‘keep calm and keep going’
“My old man has always been ‘glass half-empty’, so I’ve always been the same,” said Millen.
“It’s just the way he is.
“It’s good, there is a bit of positivity about the place but we just need to take it game by game. We’re only three games into the league.
“We just need to keep calm and keep going.
“Personally, I might be sounding negative, but we just need to win a few games, keep our feet on the ground and hopefully try and get ourselves in the top four.
“It’s really tough – as you saw with results today, anybody can beat anybody.
“We just need to get as many points as possible on the board before Christmas and see where it takes us.
Millen pleased with clean sheet in Fife derby
“It was good to win the game, we were backs to the wall for about half an hour of the second half.
“I’ve been the other side of it at East End Park. When they start to get going and get the crowd behind them, it’s really difficult to keep it tight.
“You feel like they’re sucking the ball into the goal.
“It’s a difficult place to go. I’m just really happy to get a win away and get a clean sheet as well.”
Raith Rovers putting ‘a lot of hard work on training ground’
To do so Rovers had to withstand a number of Dunfermline balls into the box.
It was an issue that plagued them last season and there has been noted improvement so far this campaign.
“We lost away to Hibs, the goal, but that was 11 set-pieces we defended that day and we only lost one.
“We needed to try and rectify that and we did that today.
Ah man, I thought this had sent after the game…
🇮🇨📣 pic.twitter.com/OIR0g5Quq7
— Craig Cairns (@craigcairns001) August 26, 2023
“It’s a lot of hard work on the training ground and video analysis, stuff like that.
“The guys have listened and taken it on board, it showed today.”
