Elgin City vs St Johnstone Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

Elgin City came agonisingly close to promotion last season when they finished as runners up in Scottish League Two, just three points behind winners East Fife. They then lost the promotion playoff horrendously when Clyde beat them 5-1 on aggregate to resign them to another season in Scotland’s 4th tier.

Despite the horror show of an ending for them, Elgin City will be relatively happy with how the season went as whole and will feel that they can mount a serious challenge for promotion again next season. First they have to traverse their way through the Scottish League Cup groups though in this reformatted competition.

This isn’t going to be an easy task for the hosts though. They will have to play a match each against the likes of St Johnstone, Falkirk, Stirling Albion, and Brechin City. In all honesty they will have to perform incredibly well to stand a chance of either winning the group or being one of the best four 2nd place finishers, which is what is required to progress to the knockout stages of the competition.

St Johnstone can be very happy with how last season went for them. They managed to maintain their position in the top four of the Scottish Premiership even with the return of Hearts to the top flight. They picked up almost exactly the same amount of points to finish 4th. Admittedly they were nine points behind Hearts by the end, but the six point gap between them and Motherwell in 5th was a comfortable one.

The visitors finished the season very strongly too, which can be an important factor in defining how the beginning of the following campaign will go. They won four and drew one of their final five matches, beating both Celtic and Aberdeen in the process.

St Johnstone averaged two goals per game during this final run in, which is very impressive considering they were playing all top-half opposition in the Scottish Premiership. This sort of goalscoring form will be a worry to the likes of Elgin City, who have conceded ten goals in their last five games against vastly inferior opponents to their opponents on Saturday.

This is making me think that this could be a high scoring affair on Saturday, especially since St Johnstone have failed to keep a clean sheet in their last five outings too. My prediction is for a St Johnstone Win and Over 2.5 Goals at attractive looking odds of 10/11, and I’m backing a 3-1 correct score prediction at 10/1 as well.