Mick Kennedy believes East Kilbride's Premier Sports League Cup campaign has proven his side can mount a challenge in League One this season. The League Two champions open their league account at K-Park on Saturday against Queen of the South, where they will unfurl the League Two flag.
East Kilbride started their cup group with a stunning 3-0 win over Championship side Dunfermline, followed by a 5-3 victory over League Two Dumbarton. They then led Premiership side St Mirren 3-0 before being pegged back and losing 4-3 in stoppage time, and slipped to a 3-2 defeat at League One rivals Cove Rangers. Despite failing to progress, Kennedy feels the performances give his squad belief after back-to-back league titles.
Cup form backs promotion ambitions
Kennedy said: "One thing I don't lack is confidence and belief. Our aspiration has to be to go for promotion." And we have shown in the cup campaign that we are more than capable of competing with sides at our level and above. The challenge will be can we do it over a 36-game league campaign?
"But I don't think anyone will be looking forward to playing us either. We will probably be the best possession team in the league, it will be about how we convert that into winning games of football and managing the defensive frailties we have."
"I think we are going into this in a really strong position and I believe we will be up the top end of the league competing. It will be a challenge against full-time teams and their fitness and experience will be a big factor for them. We are quite an inexperienced group but the boys have a lot of confidence and belief and that is the most important thing."
Dominant displays and St Mirren disappointment
Kennedy was disappointed not to have won at Cove. He said: "I was really disappointed that we didn't go up to Cove and win that game because we should have been going into the St Mirren game already out of the group after the start we had against Dunfermline."
He added: "I know in this cup, it happens where Premiership sides lose games but usually it is through teams sitting in and being hard to beat. But I think for large spells of our games, we totally dominated our games and anyone watching that St Mirren game would have said we were very much worthy of our 3-0 lead in that game."
"But the changes St Mirren made at half-time to bring on some freshness, Cami Elliott having to come off at half-time leaving us with no centre-forward, Joao Balde and Lewis McGrattan being out injured, we couldn't really freshen things up ourselves. But in terms of the level of performance, we were outstanding. The league is our bread and butter and we hope to take this into the league campaign."
Team news for Queen of the South opener
East Kilbride will be without midfielders Joao Balde and Lewis McGrattan due to ankle injuries. Striker Cami Elliott (hamstring) and defender Jamie Hamilton (knee) are doubts.
"Joao and Gratts are missing, Cami and Jamie Hamilton are tough-and-go, so that's a few players we would expect to start who could be out," Kennedy revealed. "We'll just need to manage that on Saturday."
"But I am really looking forward to the occasion, our first game in League One. If you look at the fixtures we've got early on, we've probably got the hardest start on paper. We go into Saturday in really good form and it is important to get a good start because we have aspirations of doing well this season."
