No Hiding Place

“It is demoralising but sometimes that is football, you lose games that you think you should be winning, you just have to pick yourself up and go again on Saturday.”

Few Pars fans would have thought that after a satisfying 4-1 win at Alloa on 24th October last year, that would be the last three league points to be collected on the road. Nineteen away days without a league win have been made since but left back Josh Edwards is hoping to put that record to bed with a win in the Highland capital this weekend:

“I have every confidence that we can go up there and beat Inverness. In the game recently at East End Park I truly believe that we should have won the game. We had a chance in the last five minutes to achieve a 1-0 win.

“We defended really well in that game. I don’t think that was our only chance, we had a couple but that is the kind of small margins that are putting us in the position that we are in just now. I have every confidence that we can go up to Inverness on Saturday and get the result that we are looking for.

“In this league anyone can beat anyone. Inverness have had a great start to the season, they have been playing well and getting good results so it would be a statement to go there and beat them. Hopefully we can take our first three points of the season, build on it from there and start to climb back up the table.”

Josh’s optimism is a sign that no one at East End Park is going to dwell on the inability to get a win against ninth placed Morton last Saturday. He considered that it was a home game with a good chance of winning and he stressed:-

“You want to win. So coming out with a result like that is not exactly what you were wanting.

This week the players’ video review of the Morton match looked back on the positives of the first half and what they were doing right and then a second half where it went badly wrong. Josh observed things during the game that led to them having the opposition getting chances to score:-

“Ultimately, when we looked at it they didn’t really have that many chances. But at the end of the day they scored from their chances and we didn’t create enough to score. That is how we lost the game.”

After the departure of Peter Grant there was hope that the caretaker management team of Greg Shields and Steven Whittaker would create the fresh approach and the impetus to record a much sought after win but that was not to be. Josh said that no stones are being left unturned in the search for a win and there has always been the determination to win matches no matter who is in charge:-

“All the boys in the changing room believe that we can go and win a game of football. It is just wee things, re-occurring mistakes that we are making and we are trying to address that as quickly as we can.

“Morton did not really cut us open, it was just simple little mistakes that we made that at the end of the day cost us. I think we lost the first two contacts from the corner for the second goal. The ball has dropped to the striker who has tapped it into the net.

“We have been talking about things like that. If we don’t win the first contact at the corner we need to win the second, inevitably there are going to be chances on our goal and that is exactly what happened. We have been working hard to not let those mistakes happen again.”

There are leaders in the dressing room, the more experienced pros - Graham Dorrans, Mark Connolly, Ryan Dow - who can be influential when it comes to talking through the things required to win matches but Josh claimed that it is not just the more experienced voices that are heard:-

“Everyone is allowed to have their say in what they think had happened. Obviously Shieldsie and Whitts will be the main voices but the onus is not just put on the experienced players, everyone is having their own opinion now on what is being discussed.”

After all the deliberations and another week in training Josh is more convinced than ever that Dunfermline will turn a corner and start winning games again:-

“I know for a fact that we will turn it around. It takes just one performance and I have no doubt that it will come shortly.
We know what the situation is, you can’t really hide from it. We are bottom of the league and we have not won a game.

“It is definitely not good enough for the club that we play for. We all know that and we all completely accept it but know for a fact that we will be able to turn it around. The sooner that we do it the better so that we can kick on for the rest of the season.”

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