We wrote about another Scottish League Cup aka ‘Betfred Cup’ group fixture earlier today and in this preview we’ll look at another match for Wednesday.
For those of you who don’t want to click on the link above to get up to speed on the Betfred Cup/Scottish League Cup here’s what you need to know: the Scottish League Cup is a competition comprised of all Scottish Professional Football League teams. It dates back to 1946 and is considered to be the second most important championship in Scotland behind the Scottish Cup which will start up in August and is sponsored by William Hill. The field is comprised of eight groups of five teams which includes all Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs as well as the top teams from the Highland Football League and the Lowland Football League. Teams playing in Champions League and Europa League qualifiers get a bye into the second round.
As is often the case in tournaments with the group/knockout format there are often plenty of early round mismatches. This appears to be one of them. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Albion Rovers–it’s just that they’re a team that plays in Scotland’s League Two which is the fourth level of football in the country. Dunfermline Athletic is in the Football Championship which like the English competition by the same name is the second level circuit in the country. They were a middle of the pack team in their competition last year so Dunfermline will likely want to ‘make a statement’ in this competition and in this fixture.
So far Dunfermline has done just that. They caught a very favorable group seeding for this competition with only one Scottish Premier League team in the group. They then went out and beat the upper division team–St. Mirren–in their first group fixture. The final score was 3-2 after Dunfermline opened up a 3-0 lead. They’re likely concerned about blowing that lead but ultimately they regained their composure and took the victory. They’ll likely try to play a more disciplined match here and given the qualitative disparity between the sides that should get them a solid victory.
