Scott's well up for first team battle

Sep 27 2008 by Paul Behan, Paisley Daily Express

SCOTT Cuthbert revealed that he intends to lay down a marker for an extended stay in the St Mirren first team when Gus MacPherson’s side travel to Fir Park today.

The on-loan Celtic defender will fill in for Will Haining who is definitely ruled out of this afternoon’s game with a calf injury.

And Cuthbert, 21, insisted he’ll be fired up for this afternoon’s SPL clash with Mark McGhee’s Steelmen.

He said: “I came here to get experience and play at this level, so if I play on Saturday obviously I’ll be delighted.

“It’s great to be training with the first team and preparing for games and it’s exciting to be involved.

“Now I’m looking forward to getting into the team and playing a bit more and hopefully stake a claim to be starting every week.

“That was my aim when I came here on loan and that’s exactly what I want to do.”

Cuthbert, though, insisted his Buddies owe something back to the fans after the team’s miserable exit from the Co-operative Insurance League Cup on Tuesday night.

The Buddies lost 2-0 to Dunfermline to exit the competition in the third round and Cuthbert came on for the injured Haining with three minutes to go.

He said: “The fans who travelled up that night expected to see us win the game, so they were disappointed with the fact that we didn’t get a result.

“However tomorrow, in front of the travelling fans, we need to give them a good performance and show that we can get a classy result, especially against a team like Motherwell, who’ve not had the best of starts this season and they, too, got a bad result during the week.”

But Cuthbert does expect to be kept on his toes by the Fir Park outfit, who were one of the form teams of the SPL last season.

He said: “Last year they were flying and they were playing really good football.

“Motherwell have good players but they are coming off the back of a disappointing result against Hamilton so we’ll need to be on our toes and make sure we’re not on the backlash of that.”