Time for presents is over

Graham Dorrans:- “We have to defend better. It is goals that we are conceding too easily.”

Pars captain Graham Dorrans is feeling the urgency of having to collect league points. Having played half of the scheduled 36 matches Dunfermline sit ninth with only 14 points, just one better than bottom of the table Morton. He told the website:-

“We are where we are for a reason, everyone deserves to be in the positions that they are in. The manager has been in now for a month or so, yes it is work in progress but that needs to happen quickly, we need to get results on the board.

“We are working hard in training, you can see things - patterns and shapes happening - but we need to transfer that on to the pitch in games. Confidence is big in football and for a start losing early goals does not help.”

The team has lost early goals in their last three starts - in the third minute against Queen of the South and in the abandoned match against Kilmarnock and then in the sixth minute on Saturday against Arbroath. The 34 year old who has been playing a deep lying midfield role continued:-

“It is disappointing to lose a game 3-0. I thought early on in the game we looked like we had come out of the traps quickly but obviously conceding the goal knocked us for six a little bit.

“It is goals that are avoidable, that is what seems to be happening to us. The first goal was a mistake that we should have dealt with. The second goal was a wonder strike and there is not much that you can do about that and the third goal, was a foul or was it not a foul, but we have to defend it better. It is goals that we are conceding too easily.”

Unfortunately the way Dunfermline want to play leads to a lot of opponents sitting in to frustrate their efforts. Graham explained the thinking behind the tactics deployed and the need to increase the pace and intensity:-

“We want to dominate the ball so we need to find a way to break teams down when they do that. At the minute we are struggling to do that and we are getting countered and suckered into conceding too many goals at the other end. We need to find a balance between both and we are not quite there yet.

“If teams are going to sit in behind the ball it is important for us to move it quickly. We didn’t do that against Arbroath and in the second half we got sucked into playing their game. They are good at that and better than us at doing that.

“We need to be brave with everyone wanting the ball. Going back to the Ayr game, I thought that was as good as we have played all season. We moved it quickly and everyone wanted the ball. It is important that we do that, we see it in training every day and we see the patterns that we work on and people coming into pockets to get in behind. We need to be much more solid without the ball because I think that we are struggling with that a little bit.”

On Sunday Dunfermline missed the backing of their home fans and the skipper felt that it is never easy when the fans aren’t there:-

“It would have been nice if they had been here but we are in strange times and we have to adhere to the rules. Hopefully we can get them back in as soon as possible because when they are behind us it gives us that extra push.”

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