Gerry on Friday

"The Quarter Final is the carrot"

Assistant Manager, Gerry McCabe is looking forward to the home Scottish Cup tie against Hamilton Accies:-

"Accies have had a few good results albeit they had a bad one last week. They have drawn with us on our ground before and will come here with a bit of confidence. With the players that we have got here, we have got to get ourselves going again. I wouldn't say we played particularly badly against Livingston last Saturday; there were things in the game that could have changed the game for us. A wee run in the cup would get the confidence back up."

Gerry felt that injuries in a squad that was not large had caused Jim Jefferies to move players. But he added that it was felt that one or two individuals have not played to the kind of form that they started the season in.

"Players set their own standards with the start we had and if you don't play to or play close to those standards people look at them and say 'he is not the player that he was at the start of the season'. But the thing is, they know that they are capable of playing to that standard. It is up to them to get that consistency back in their game."

Gerry was tolerant of players who had never played in the First Division when joining Dunfermline in the summer. The new team came together but self belief required to be boosted. A remedy for that would be hitting the net with greater regularity:-

"You can put that down to two things; strikers' lack of confidence - when you miss chances it does dent your confidence. We have missed a few - against Airdrie Ryan Wallace knows that he should have put us in front."

Other misses against Livingston further compounded the problem but the Assistant Manager feels that if they keep plugging away the breaks will come their way. The players are hurting in the knowledge that they feel they can do better.

"They are the only ones who can do anything about it. We are there to help and guide and try and get the best out of them. At free kicks, setpieces, corner kicks we have got to put the onus on ourselves to get the goal, especially defenders. Big Callum (Morris) scored, Andy Dowie has scored but only one each, other teams have centre halves who score five or six in a season. Everybody has to chip in when the strikers are not doing it, we have to get goals from other areas - Thommo was unfortunate when he had a good 'goal' chopped off last week. Joe and wee Josh are capable of scoring. We have midfield players who can score."

Gerry looks for a game every week but feels that the free weekend when the game at Cowdenbeath gave them a chance to let several injuries recover but on the minus side the missed game meant a loss of consistency. "If we'd got the result after it, people would have said 'the rest did them good' it can work both ways. We disappointed the fans last week and we were as disappointed as them. There is not a lot wrong, we can get clicking again."

Andy Barrowman is suspended for the cup tie. Andy Geggan is injured, Stephen Jordan has a strain and will undergo a fitness test in the morning, Alex Whittle and Stephen Husband are back in training. With several SPL teams drawn together the carrot for Dunfermline is a place in the Quarter Finals.

Gerry also confirmed that Italian Ivan D'Angelo will remain at Dunfermline until the end of the season but there was no comings or goings during the January transfer window as far as Dunfermline Athletic were concerned.