Kevin Rutkiewicz hopes the East Kilbride players and staff will be pulling three points out of their crackers on the club’s festive night out this Saturday.
But he knows Edinburgh University are more than capable of ruining Christmas for the K-Park side.
The students shocked Kilby in September with a 3-2 win at K-Park and in the last five league meetings between the sides, EK have won just once and lost twice.
Edinburgh have had a habit of frustrating EK down the years and Rutkiewicz hopes they can atone for this season’s defeat to help them savour this year’s yuletide celebrations that little bit more.
He said: “I want the boys to go and have a good night but, first thing’s first, go and win the game and make it more enjoyable for everybody.
“The boys are going down south but I’m not aware of exactly where because I don’t take too much to do with it.
“We’ve got our staff night on Saturday as well so it would be nice to be sitting around a table with a wee bite to eat and pulling a cracker with three points inside it – I’ll take that right away!
“We are well aware of the pitfalls of facing Edinburgh Uni down the years at this club. They have been a thorn in our side and we’ve got to shake it.
“They’ve done us before this season and deservedly so. When they came to K-Park we deserved nothing from the game and Edinburgh played really well.”
However, Rutkiewicz has also warned his side they can’t let their thirst for revenge get them going too much, as his second place side seek to stay on the coattails of Rangers B and fend off a chasing pack that includes Tranent, Celtic B and Stirling University.
He added: “We don’t need any motivation for Saturday but what we can’t do is go out there and try to right a wrong.
“We’ve got to approach it with a bit of composure.
“Each player has to know what they have to achieve on the day to get the result.
“Every opponent throws up different questions and problems and we’ve got to adapt.
“More often than not, we have but the last Edinburgh game was a situation where we didn’t so we’ve got to make sure, as a management team, we get the right message to the boys because whatever we said last time didn’t work.
“We hold our hands up to that and we’ll be looking to execute our plan better this time.”
Saturday's clash at Peffermill is a 3pm kick-off.
Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport on Twitter via @LanLiveSport, like us on Facebook or find us on Instagram for the latest sports news, pictures and video.
