Dougie Imrie on whether he believes Raith Rovers would be top of table without extensive injury list
With Raith Rovers currently third in the William Hill Championship table after accumulating 21 points from their opening 11 fixtures despite suffering extensive injury problems to key players, there is the distinct possibility that they could be sitting clear at the top if so many top stars hadn’t been on the treatment table.
The Fife Free Press posed this very question to Raith gaffer Dougie Imrie this week and he replied: “There's good teams in this league. We're doing fine the way we are.
"What I will say is if we had everybody fit, it would give us a better chance to keep momentum in games and keep intensity in games.
"But what the boys are giving me is amazing. They're running themselves into the ground.
"We're training with limited options at the moment, but they keep going and they keep going.
"What I keep saying to them is, when we get everybody back then we can start to go again because the training week's tapered as well because of the numbers.
"We can't demand a lot out of them because we've no good numbers to do that and we try to make sure we don't pick up any more injuries.
"But in terms of what they're giving on the pitch, I can't fault anybody.”
When asked if Raith have a real shot at promotion this year, Imrie added: “I don't get carried away. I know every week you try and get stuff out of me.
"We take one game at a time. I think, historically, for any team in the Championship, to get to January, that's when you see teams start to open up gaps and the ones that have been consistent and up there generally start to pull away.
"There's only 11 games played. There's a long way to go, but we're delighted with the position we're in.
"But you have to keep going. The season lasts 36 games, it’s not done tomorrow.
"It's up to ourselves and the staff to make sure we keep pushing, keep demanding and keep squeezing as much out as we can out of the group to keep being up and around the top of the league.
"But certainly, as I said that after the game on Saturday, if we play anywhere like we did in the first 45 minutes going forward then we'll certainly not be anywhere near anything come the end of the season if that's how we turn up to games.”