Important building blocks

“The structure of what you’ve got at your football club is important, and if you’ve got a facility where people are taken aback and say, ‘I’d like to be training there day-in, day-out’ then these are all selling points.

Regular discussions with Thomas Meggle, one of the four new German custodians of Dunfermline Athletic have really impressed the Pars boss Peter Grant. He finds them very positive people with a fantastic and sincere desire to bring success to the club. With covid travel restrictions now relaxed Peter has been impressed by their interest and engagement with the fans:-

“The most important thing at any football club is the supporters and I think great credit to them they’re trying to show that they’re here. They’re not one of these investors who go and hide and you only see them once a year.

“They want to be at the forefront of it and build the club and make it better and take the club forward, and great credit to them. Thomas is a good football man, I’ve known him in his football career, and there’s a lot of things you can speak to him about - in German football, how they do things differently coaching-wise.

“No matter what age you are, you can always learn every day and I think that’s important. He’ll ask me questions about certain things and I’ll ask him questions about certain things, both on the business side of things and what they’re doing with the club.”

The investors are trying to improve things off the pitch to help while Peter Grant is trying to do that with the players on the pitch. He admits that he is excited to be at the forefront of the plans for a training ground and youth academy:-

“I’ve known this football club for a long, long time, even from playing against it as a youngster, so I know what the expectation is here, and it’s fantastic to be playing under that expectation.

“People expect the very best, the supporters expect the very best and they turn up in their numbers. We’ve got a big support and I’m sure we can get more if we’re successful. That’s what we’re trying to do.

“To do that you have to build the full club and I think that’s so important, to get the training facility and simple things like that. Then, when you’re bringing players in you’re not going to a rented place like we are at the moment. You’re bringing them to your club, to your training facility, and selling them that.

“Sometimes, we’re not going to be able to do anything with finance, because teams are going to be able to pay that little bit more. So, the structure of what you’ve got at your football club is important, and if you’ve got a facility where people are taken aback and say, ‘I’d like to be training there day-in, day-out’ then these are all selling points.

“That’s what the boys are desperate to do, they’re desperate to be successful. German people always want to be the best and do the best, and be successful, and I think they’ve proven that in whatever they’ve touched before. I think we should be very, very happy.

“It was something I was conscious of before I took the job, in whether they were going to be hands-on in respect of being here. I speak to Thomas twice a week, probably, once on FaceTime and I sit with him on that for a couple of hours and just have a blether, about the club and about football in general.

“I think that’s very, very important when you’re trying to build a successful first-team, because I think that makes everyone else happy and makes everybody else’s jobs a lot easier, if we’re successful on the football pitch.

“That gives you a little bit of time to try and build something off it and that’s what the club’s trying to do. Hopefully I can build things the right away with the team on the pitch and get performances that makes everybody push that way and it makes it that little bit easier for them.”

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