DARREN YOUNG has called on his Albion Rovers players to believe they can compete at the top end of League One.

Young wants his players to carry the self-belief that took them to last year’s League Two title into the new campaign.

“Obviously you’d love to aim for the top of the table, and we did it last season,” he said.

“The guys have got to believe and have faith and confidence in their own abilities to go on and do well.

“It’s about belief. I don’t think probably until about halfway through last season the players actually thought ‘we could win this league here.’

“We’ve got to go into it believing we can go and compete and enjoy the challenge of testing ourselves at a higher level.

“It’s a massive task. We’re up a division, up a level, and the players will be quicker, fitter and stronger. We’ve got to try and match that and cope with that the best we can.”

Rovers go into the first match of the season against Ayr United – the side that knocked them out of the Petrofac Training Cup.

They followed that up with a heavy defeat to Raith Rovers in the League Cup, but Young is sure his players will cut out the mistakes that cost them in those games.

“We started off not too badly and then we kind of shot ourselves in the foot again,” he said.

“We gave away a needless penalty, and then another from a set-piece, so that’s disappointing as we repeated the same errors from the week before, especially considering our defensive record last season.

“But the individual errors which are costing us can be prevented.

“I’d be more worried if we were playing poorly and we were getting ripped apart and teams were destroying us, but that’s not been the case.

“It’s still early days, but now we’ve got the real deal this week in the league.

“We’ve got to bounce back and we’ll be looking to get three points to get ourselves off to a good start.

“The minimum we expect is fight, hard work and determination. From there, you can kick on and start to play and score goals.”