Ross Draper believes Elgin City are getting what they expect from Highland League hosts in pre-season – tough encounters as they rebuild for next term.
The new Black and Whites manager takes his League Two team off to Spain Park on Tuesday to tackle Banks o’ Dee.
Elgin slid to a 2-o defeat at HFL hosts Huntly on Saturday in Alex Thoirs’ testimonial at Christie Park after a dozen years of service for the Black and Golds.
That came on the back of an impressive 5-1 friendly win against Rothes at the Gleaner Arena.
Deals will soon fall into place – boss
Draper explained there are no deals imminent, although the club are working on adding more faces to bolster their squad numbers for their Viaplay Cup and League Two campaigns.
He said: “Saturday was a tough game for us at Huntly for Alex’s testimonial. We still have things to work on. We’re still short on numbers.
“These games are opportunities for boys to get game-time and stake a claim in the team. We’re continuing to look bring more players in.
“All Highland League teams present their own problems for you. Banks o’ Dee will be another tough test for our boys. We will dust ourselves down and go again.
“It’s a bit of a domino effect where we see when one move happens in terms of players, it moves quickly and we will be in better shape.”
The Borough Briggs club added to their front-line last week with the loan capture from Aberdeen of 18-year-old striker Liam Harvey.
With talisman Kane Hester now at Montrose, adding to the attack is a priority for Draper, who replaced Gavin Price in the City hot-seat this summer.
Elgin will step up the levels again this Saturday when they travel to Championship side Caley Thistle.
Lawson happy with squad’s progress
Meanwhile, Banks o’ Dee co-manager Paul Lawson is pleased with the make-up of their squad as they gear up for the new campaign.
Dee have promoted Jason Selbie, Ramsay Davidson, Connor Osprey and Ewen Robertson from their Junior squad, but otherwise have been pretty quiet on the recruitment front.
However, Lawson said: “A lot of people might look and say we haven’t really taken anyone in.
“But we signed Jevan Anderson and Chris Antoniazzi towards the end of last season.
“They were two targets we identified to go after in the summer, but it just so happened we managed to get them earlier.
“On the face of it, it looks like we haven’t done any business, but we managed to do some early.
“Ideally we’d like to bring in one or two if they became available, but we’re happy with the way the squad is at the moment.”
Banks o’ Dee lost 2-0 to Peterhead on Sunday in their first pre-season friendly.
Lawson is looking forward to facing another SPFL side in Elgin with trialists Kyle Irvine, Angus Logan and Matthew Duncan again set to be involved.
He added: “In pre-season you want to have games where you might have a lot of the ball and games where you won’t have as much of the ball so you can try different things.
“Sunday was a good run-out for our first game and we managed to get the majority of boys 45 minutes, some had to play 90.”