Manager Post Dundee

30/03/10: JM "I told the boys at half time 'lets make sure that we don't throw this lead away and lets win this game for Greg. I am delighted that we did that."

Jim McIntyre started off with an update on the injury to his young keeper, Greg Paterson in what was just his third league start:-

"He has a bad leg break; he is away to hospital and I am devastated for the boy. He has just got his chance in the team and came in on Saturday and did really well."

Macca was quick to add that he felt the ball was there to be won when Ben Hutchinson and Greg both went in.

"I do not hold any ill feeling at all because I think the ball held up in the weather and it was two committed players going for it. Sometimes these things happen in football but it is a bad one, I think everybody could see that by the way his leg was hanging. We will find out more in the coming days how bad it is."

The Dunfermline Manager acknowledged that Hutchinson was truly gutted by what had happened:-

"It probably affected the boy, it is horrible seeing that sort of thing happen to a fellow professional but it is part and parcel of the game - its horrible side.

"We are delighted that we have won the game - it was a must win game for us if we were to have any aspirations to still have a slim chance. It was important that we got back to that after two defeats but the injury took the shine off it a bit.

"I told the boys at half time 'lets make sure that we don't throw this lead away and lets win this game for Greg. I am delighted that we did that."

When Dundee Manager Gordon Chisholm spoke about the incident he was sure that the injury causing tackle wasn't intentional:-

"The boy has gone to get the ball, it was a genuine tackle and I know he was getting stick but I would have taken him off. The boy is in there distraught, he is not that kind of player and we feel for the keeper. I do not know how bad it was but to be honest it looked bad from where I was standing.

"The boy was absolutely sick about it, nobody likes to see that."

Jim McIntyre did not dismiss the suggestion that Dunfermline were still in with a shout in the race for the one promotion place:-

"We definitely have a chance but we need to win all our games because we have played the most. We do not have any margin for error or games in hand. To give ourselves a chance we know what we need to do because it is still in other teams hands and we need favours from other people. In this league you cannot think five games ahead, you just have to try and win one at a time because they are so difficult.

"We have Ross County on Saturday who have done fantastically well getting to the semis and they have had a great league campaign. We know how difficult that is going to be since we have had a couple of draws with them already this season. They have been high scoring games and entertaining games; I don't think Saturday will be any different."

The Manager described Willie Gibson's performance against Dundee as sensational:-

"He was excellent. We tried to tell him that he needs to stay higher up the pitch when you are receiving the ball. He has a tendency to come back too far and then you have to much to do. If you stay higher and let the full back get a hold of you then you can hurt teams better. The way he would take it in, turn one way and then the other - he had the full back on toast.

"Willie is a complex character, he would tell you that himself. I think he is a major goal threat because he can hit the ball with both feet. What we really encourage with him is when the ball is on the opposite side to get into the back post because that's where a lot of goals are scored. As a wide man he is used to just standing out on the other side and when the ball comes to him doing his stuff but he needs to take more part than that.

"He needs to come in the park a bit especially when the ball is on the other side. You are in an area then if you receive it, where you can go and have a poke at the goal. He has scored a couple of real crackers this season. He was our Man of the Match in what was a great battling team performance showing real character after Saturday's defeat."

Dundee Manager Gordon Chisholm felt that his team was second best and that his opponents were the better side:-

"I said before the game that we have seven cup finals, we did really well on Saturday but I felt that we got run over the top of in the first half. We gave away goals and looked second best to everything. We just didn't compete for second balls and I thought Dunfermline were by far the better team especially in the first half.

"In the second half we changed it around a bit after a couple of boys got injured. A couple of substitutions were forced on us but it was going to get changed anyway. I asked the boys 'do you want to throw this away because you have worked all season for it'. It wasn't going to be pretty tonight, it was going to be about rolling your sleeves up and I don't think we did that in the first 45 minutes."