Raith Rovers: Attacker Dylan Easton reckons improved playing squad and infrastruture at club is geared towards premier league

Raith, second in the Championship with 17 points from eight games and four points behind leaders Dundee United with a game in hand, were idle last Saturday as their scheduled outing at Arbroath was postponed due to extreme weather. And Easton is relishing the challenge of keeping their fine start going.

"This place is geared towards the premier league,” the former Airdrieonians player, 29, told the Fife Free Press. “I said since I joined Raith, the size of the stadium – we had over 6500 fans for the Dundee United game here – that’s premier league level.

"You don’t want to get too excited but I’m sure that the new owners and everyone involved with the club, their ambition is to get to the top flight.

"That’s our aim. We don’t want to be a Championship team, we want to try and push the club further and hopefully push them towards the premier league.

“The new owners have brought a few new boys in with them and the professionalism around everything has gone up a notch.

"Having guys like John Potter (Raith technical director) around the training pitch and pushing people on, the changing rooms have been done, there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes in terms of the infrastructure of the stadium. There’s just a real high quality about everything this year, everyone is bubbly and everyone is getting on.

"I think that makes a big difference. You don’t want to be going into your work and not enjoying it.

"Everyone’s going in with a smile on their face and it’s really good.”

In Raith’s eight league games so far, Easton has netted three times in what has been a fine start to the campaign for him on a personal level.

He added: "I’ve obviously started really well, I’ve had a right good run of games and I’m feeling really good at the moment so long may it continue.

“Apart from when I was suspended against Hibs and missed a couple of games after that because the boys did really well, it’s been a good start to the season for me.

"But it’s a right squad effort this year. There’s boys that aren’t playing are going to be breathing down your neck and if you don’t perform well or miss out through injury, they can then take your place.

“It’s no disrespect to the players that were here last year but I think there were a lot of players that were expecting to play last season.

"I think it’s completely different this year and it’s keeping everyone on their toes.

"You just have to look at the training, it’s different class, it’s high tempo every single day of the week.

"We’re pushing each other on and that’s what you need if you want to compete to win championships or whatever, you need to have that squad depth.

"That was the difference last year when teams like Dundee and Partick Thistle had right good squads.

"Hopefully we can keep this good run going and pick up as many points as we can.”