Edinburgh City 0 Clyde 0: Bully Wee draw another blank

The draw marked both side’s first points of 2017 and Clyde’s second point in eight matches, the last one also coming against City at Broadwood in December.

Disappointed boss Barry Ferguson admitted that his side were frustrated by Edinburgh’s well organised defence:

“You can see why they take points off people, the way they play, five at the back. We created two clean cut chances where we should have finished them off. Fair play to them, but we still should have come away with the three points.”

The opening exchanges saw Chris Smith have his pocket picked by Ousman See, but he was bailed out by John Gibson who denied the hosts from grabbing a goal in the fifth minute.

Marc McKenzie came closest for Clyde after 10 minutes where his curling effort from the edge of the box was heading for the top right corner only to be tipped over by an excellent diving save from Andrew Stobie.

Neither side were able to create any legitimate goal scoring opportunities for the remainder of the opening period with attacks seeming to dissipate in the final third.

The game threatened to come to life in the second half as the visitors increased the tempo and were more direct in their efforts to get forward, but they were unable to convert their pressure into goals.

Peter MacDonald came close on 66 minutes as he met a cross from David Gormley with a powerful downward headed effort. Stobie was able to push this behind.

MacDonald was again unfortunate not to score with his head in the 79th minute where a cleaner connection with McKenzie’s cross would have directed the ball past the keeper.

The Bully Wee were agonisingly close to snatching a winner when Gormley was denied at the death from close range with what was the best chance of the match. His shot however, was too close to Stobie who was able to block with his body and secure the draw.