Pars need to do it on the pitch

OFW:- “We’re keeping the ball in certain areas, but we’ve got to move the ball quicker,

Former Inverness Caley Thistle keeper Owain Fôn Williams has warned that Dunfermline will need to up their game if they can expect anything from Wednesday night’s home match against his old team. He acknowledged that they are a good side and have been up around the top of the Championship all season:-

“It’s no coincidence they are where they are, they’re a very good side. We won up there at their place and hopefully we can do that again and perform the same way.”

The Pars keeper claimed that they need to move the ball on quicker and be accountable for what he recognised as not an acceptable standard for Dunfermline:-

“It’s not good enough, it’s not where we want to be. We are where we are, purely because of that so, if we are to get better, we need to work at getting better every single day. It doesn’t just happen. It’s all good and well doing it on the training ground, but we’ve got to do it out on the pitch.”

Dismissing the suggestion that may be more difficult in an empty stadium, Owain pointed out:-

“There are no distractions when there’s no-one here. There’s no-one watching you training. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and be accountable for what we do on the football pitch. And we need to mirror what we do on the training ground and implement that in the game.”

The conundrum is why can’t the seemingly impressive training ground standard be reproduced in games?

“I don’t know” said the 34 year old Welsh internationalist, “the only thing I can say is it’s a mindset. It’s the player’s job to look at themselves in the mirror and work on their personal game, the more you work, the luckier you’ll get.”

After a below par performance against Arbroath on Boxing Day, Owain reflected that sometimes in his experience, players need something to trigger them to get them going:-

“We’ve just got to demand it. Sometimes people are waiting for someone to do something, and then you get a momentum from that. Whether that’s a tackle or a ball or a run, or a save or a block.

“Rather than going, ‘right, you know what, I’m going to be right on it from the get-go here’. I don’t know if it’s that, I couldn’t tell you but it’s frustrating to be conceding these goals as early as we are, because we’re not giving ourselves much of a chance.”

The keeper feels that the players need to demand more from one another:-

“We’re keeping the ball in certain areas, but we’ve got to move the ball quicker, especially playing against a team that’s quite happy to sit in and is quite organised in their shape. The pitch at East End Park is massive and if the ball speed’s no good they can still be in their four, or whatever it is, to be able to defend it.

“So we need to demand a better ball, we need to demand that the ball speed is good, for us to be be able to then release the ball when the opposition isn’t set.

“As a footballer, you take one game at a time and Wednesday is going to come and the rest of the games are going to come thick and fast now but the message is going to be exactly the same - we need to do it out on the pitch.

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