Stellar show from Stolarczyk

“In the position that we are in, we need points more than performances ….

Leicester City’s young Polish goalkeeper Jakub Stolarczyk was widely praised for his sparkling performance at Kilmarnock on Saturday. Pulling off a series of fantastic saves the 21 year old, on loan to Dunfermline Athletic, stood out and was responsible for restricting the title chasing league leaders to just two goals. To be tested by an international striker like Kyle Lafferty is the very thing the Premiership club would have wished for.

While his bosses down south would be delighted to watch the keeper’s highlights, Jakub did not share the case for celebration. While great to put in a praiseworthy performance he stressed his focus was on preserving his current team’s league status:-

“To be honest with you, I would have taken the game with about two or three touches, nothing to do and taken three points out of that performance. In the position that we are in, we need points more than performances like this.

“Obviously it always feels good when you can help the team. I was doing my best but in the end it wasn’t enough to get three points which is very very disappointing. The whole team is very disappointed because we know that we can give much more than we did.”

Lafferty put Kilmarnock ahead in 26 minutes but for the next 50 minutes of the match while at 1-0 there was always the chance that the Fifers could grab an equaliser but that would have been against the run of play since Derek McInnes’ side persistently tested Jakub. He admitted:-

“We did feel under pressure and could not find a way to get out of this pressure especially when we were on the ball. I made one or two saves, then we had the ball, lost it and put pressure on ourselves again. I think that was the biggest problem in this game because Kilmarnock played very well, consistently putting the pressure on us. We could never really find a way to get out of it. It is something that we definitely need to look at before our next game.”

Certainly the towering keeper’s form is extremely welcome as Dunfermline now face three fixtures commonly described as three cup finals. Next up are Ayr United at home next Saturday, followed by Partick Thistle away the following week before a meeting on the final night of the league season at home with Queen of the South. Jakub continued:-

“The manager mentioned a few days ago, this is going to be the biggest month for the club and we all know this. We are all prepared for what is coming but I think we need to take game by game. Reflect on the Kilmarnock game, try to take some positives and work on the problems we had in this game.

“Going into the next game we need to make sure that we are going to be the ones on top and we are going to be putting the pressure on the opposition because we need these three points.

“For our next two home games we need to make our stadium a bit of a fortress. When Ayr United come over on Saturday they will know it is going to be a tough, tough game for them because we are on a good run at home and hopefully the fans will get behind us and help us out to get three points in that game.”

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