Match Preview: Cowdenbeath v Dundee

Tuesday night see's Dundee return to Central Park in another vital Irn-Bru First Division clash and the Blue Brazil will be looking to repeat the 2-1 scoreline the last time the Dee were in town - kick off 7.45pm.

Barry Smith's team are unbeaten in the league since that visist to Central Park in September but confidence will be high in the Cowden camp after Saturdays unbelievable comeback against Stirling Albion, and they will be hopeful of taking points at home for the 3rd midweek match in a row. Stirling led 3-0 with 13 minutes remaining but goals from Mark Ramsay (2), Archie Campbell and Greg Stewart secured 3 vital points and opened up a 7 point lead over the bottom placed side.

"That was some game on Saturday - not sure I have experienced a finish to a game like that before", commented Jimmy Nicholl.

"It was a vital three points which gives us some breathing space and keeps the momentum from Tuesday's draw with QoS going. The players were buzzing at training tonight and the last couple of results have really boosted morale.

"However, I was really disappointed with the performance for the first 75 minutes of the game and went through the players like a dose of salt at full-time. They are far better than that and it looked for long spells like we had handed Stirling the game on a plate. We got out of jail in the end but it was a fantastic comeback and some of the attacking play and character shown was a credit to the boys.

"We are now unbeaten in the last two games and will be looking to take that form into the Dundee game. We beat them the last time they were here and are more than capable of doing it again but know how difficult a game it will be. To put our run into context, Dundee are unbeaten in something like 18 league games and are playing like a top end team despite the position they find themselves in."

Nicholl will assess the fitness of his squad ahead of the game with a number of players carrying knocks from the weekend. Stewart, Scott Linton and Marc McKenzie (pictured) all made positive impacts from the bench on Saturday and will be pushing for a starting place on Tuesday night.

Our home form in recent weeks has shown signs of improvement - points picked up against Partick and Queen of the South has kept our points tally ticking over and kept us in touch with the teams above. In fact a win tonight could see Cowden rise to 8th level with Dundee and with games in hand on the teams nearby.  Of course though that is a massive if and one which Dundee will not be thinking about - their away form has seen them pick up 11 points from their past 5 away matches which is the 2nd highest in the league behind Raith Rovers. Our defence has failed to keep a clean sheet on league duty this season and up against a Dundee side which average 1.4 goals a league game it will be a tough ask for us not to concede.

This will be the 3rd meeting between the 2 teams this season with both sides having a win on the board - the 25th of September saw us narrowly win 2-1 at Central Park through goals from top scorer Mark Ramsay and Brian Fairbairn. Leigh Griffiths pulled one back but couldn't stop The Dee's slipping to a surprising defeat - since then however Dundee have been unbeaten in the league which included a crushing 3-0 win over us in December.

If Cowden are to end Dundee's unbeaten run they are going to have to do something which they haven't achieved for a long time - win on the 8th of March.  Our past 2 games on this date have seen defeats - 1997 saw us crumble to a 4-0 loss against Ross County to leave us languishing in 8th place in the 3rd divison while in 2003 we lost 2-1 to Raith Rovers (centre half Keith Wilson with our goal) as we headed to eventual relegation to division 3.  Incredible to think how far all the teams mentioned have come in recent years! Raith now top this division, Ross County were in the Scottish Cup final and we're battling for another season in division 1.

Match of the day fact of the week review - for the last game we discussed the fact that Cowden rarely scored goals in the last 5 minutes of matches. Next match we score 2 goals in the dying seconds of the match! Match of the day fact of the week - Cowden have tended to be slow out the traps this season both at the start of the match and at the second half. In fact we haven't scored a single goal in the opening 5 minutes of either half this season!