The League Cup has been kind to us recently but at Rugby Park our luck ran out. We came from behind twice and with fifteen minutes remaining we looked likely to secure another place at Hampden.
Unfortunately Danny Invincible had different ideas and we went crashing out. Meldrum was beginning to look shaky too. A Langfield howler almost gave us a point at Pittodrie before Hibs embarrassed us 6-1 at
Thankfully for the management it was our bunny, Falkirk who were next up. Two penalties, both of which were 50-50s, gave us a 2-1 lead before they equalised. Scott McDonald stepped up when needed though and a late goal by Elliot allowed us breathing space. We won the next game too when Richie Foran's last gasp penalty gave us the points at Inverness before we were given a hiding at Tynecastle. The next game though would go down as another major black mark in the season. We trailed 2-0 to the ten men of Dundee United but we came back to 2-2 before Foran, at full stretch, couldn't quite turn a cross in. Meldrum sold a horrible winner and we contrived to lose. No matter that we had another penalty turned down or that had Foran been six inches taller we would have won, Malpas had shown himself up badly with a terrible display of ineptitude. Things were looking grim.
We would travel away in our next two games to
Malpas, for all his critics (and there were still a lot), had turned things round at this point. We were safe in the league, we had produced some great tough performances when we really needed them and we had given Celtic another bloody nose. We had a superb chance to start a good cup run and teach those upstarts from Airdrie a thing or two while we were at it. 2007 was looking promising and, being honest, after a fairly woeful 2006 we needed something to look forward to!