Elgin City manager Gavin Price hopes another Championship test will boost the Black and Whites’ league preparations when they make the trip to Alloa Athletic in the Betfred Cup tonight.
City face the Wasps at Recreation Park tonight, having been narrowly defeated 2-1 in injury-time by fellow second-tier side Arbroath on Saturday.
Although Price is not discounting the section, the Elgin boss has one eye on the first league game of the season at home to Cowdenbeath on August 3 and he reckons a challenging group can stand the Moray outfit in good stead.
Price said: “It’s really looking at these fixtures with the opening league fixture against Cowdenbeath in mind.
“We want to get people game time and up to match sharpness – it’s an extension of our pre-season.
“We got off to a good start last year. I think the way we did our pre-season preparation was right. Although we lost every League Cup game, I think we built up quite strong over that period.
“We had hard games – with Arbroath and Alloa again – as well as Ross County and Dundee United. It’s a similar sort of challenge this year.
“We chose fixtures for pre-season reflect what we’ve got, against a couple of Highland League teams and Jeanfield Swifts.
“It’s about building up the level of opposition. The last game we have got is against Hibs, which is top opposition, and that’s normally the way we would structure our pre-season. You want to push yourself to the biggest test towards the end.
“Hopefully that will set us up for the season.”
Elgin will be without skipper Darryl McHardy (shoulder) and midfielder Brian Cameron (knee) for tonight’s match.