GW 11 – Ones To Watch

Ally: This coming weekend sees the return of big leagues in England and Scotland after the recent international break, but the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the fixture list also brings an abundance of English and Scottish FA Cup games to choose from. Some of these look particularly tempting, as the English National League sides are introduced to the FA Cup 4th Qualifying Round, while the Scottish League Two sides are in Second Round Scottish Cup action, and as a little bonus all fixtures and teams in these competitions are available for selection regardless of the league they normally play in.

My first pick is mid table Scottish League Two side Elgin City in their Cup fixture against struggling Lowland League outfit Whitehill Welfare. After a slow start to the season, Elgin beat Cowdenbeath 3-1 at home last weekend which suggests they may be finding their goalscoring feet again. They welcome a Whitehill side who have just one league win to their name this season, with a porous defence conceding on average 3 goals a game throughout their eleven league matches to date, and so I fancy Elgin to get among the goals at Borough Briggs on Saturday.

Staying north of the border, my second tip also comes from the Scottish Cup, but this time it’s Highland League leaders Cove Rangers against the magnificantly named Auchinleck Talbot. Cove boast a perfect league record with 11 wins out of 11 so far, albeit against some decidedly meagre opposition (bottom side Fort William for example have conceded an incredible 97 goals in their 13 league matches this season!). The visitors Auchinleck are one of a number of thriving junior teams in Scotland, but with little else but gut feeling to go on I’m hoping that home advantage and experience will help Cove tame the young whippersnappers and find the net en route to the next round of the Cup.

Steve: With so many tasty looking fixtures today it’s almost impossible to highlight just two teams, so I’ll just point you in the direction of two competitions where I’m sure there will plenty of big hitters!

Firstly, the FA Cup. Today see’s the National League sides enter the competition at the fourth round of qualifying. There’s a number of intriguing fixtures here where a few tiers of the football pyramid can separate the two teams, such as Hartlepool v Kidsgrove!

As mentioned by Ally, we have the Scottish Cup second round taking place this weekend where it would be no surprise at all to see three or four teams bagging 6+ goals today.

Good luck!