Raith Rovers sit just three points off top spot heading into the festive fixture schedule, and boss Grant Murray could not be much happier.
The Kirkcaldy club’s 2-1 victory over Dumbarton at the weekend was made even better by results elsewhere in the Championship race, with Dundee losing at home to Cowdenbeath and league leaders Hamilton only managing a draw at Livingston.
That scenario has set Rovers up nicely for a spell of three games in the space of 12 days that could feasibly see the Fife club top of the pile at the start of the New Year.
“We’re delighted with where we’re sitting,” he said.
“We’re disappointed with the games we’ve lost, but if you’ve said at the start of the season that this is where we would be at this stage then we would have been happy.
“We’re not quite at the half-way point yet, but we’re sitting in a reasonable position. It was good to get back to winning ways on Saturday again, but the amount of defeats we’ve had over the 16 games is not too bad.
“We had back-to-back defeats, which is always difficult, but it just shows you how tight this league is.
“If we lost on Saturday we could have dropped out of top four position. But we won the game, and with results elsewhere, now we’re sitting where we are.
“There’s no one team going to run away with it. It’s a very competitive league.
“What they’ve done at the start of the season bringing play-offs in has given every club a lift.”
Rovers went into last weekend’s game having suffered three league defeats in four, but Murray revealed the Stark’s Park management team were looking at things positively.
“We flipped that round to say we had two wins in three,” he noted.
“We’ve got to take all the stats the people throw at you away from the players. All I said to the players on Saturday was that we’d lost our last game and we wanted to bounce back with a win.
“People can bring in all the stats they want and say we’ve lost three in four, but if you put those defeats in context of the whole season it’s not a bad ratio. Conditions were difficult on Saturday, but both teams handled them well.”
Raith winger Grant Anderson remains a doubt for tomorrow’s home derby against Cowdenbeath after what looked like a bad knee injury on Saturday, but the problem does not appear to be as serious as feared.
“I would tend to rule out a serious knee injury if he’s up and walking about on it, but it’s difficult to tell,” Murray explained.
“He’s a fit boy and very athletic, so he’s the type of player who will recover quickly if it’s not a bad injury. He could be available on Saturday, but that’s me just surmising.”
Defender Paul Watson faces another month on the sidelines due to a fractured foot, while winger Joe Cardle will miss the game as his two-match suspension for last weekend’s red card was confirmed.