Mid Term Review

This review is adapted and updated from an article that appeared in Saturday’s Black & White match programme for the Stenhousemuir game.

Correct as at 20 December 2015

Home Form
In recent seasons Dunfermline has struggled with its home form, perhaps because of the pressures of expectation in this league. They may still exist but Allan Johnston’s team is adapting well with a better home record to date than for many seasons.

After 18 league matches played this is what Dunfermline’s home form in the same league looked like for the past three seasons:

Away Form
The Pars away form has been absolutely tremendous this season and compares favourably with the last two seasons, particularly in the defensive department which is so important away from home.

Goals
As always, goals are the biggest factor and Allan Johnston’s team has been successful at both ends of the park. To date the team has scored 45 goals in the league, which is almost double what the team had scored at this stage last season. With three players now in double figures for the season – Faissal El Bakhtaoui, Joe Cardle and after scoring at Ayr, Michael Moffat – the signs are that this can continue.

However, in 2013/14 the Pars had scored a very good 40 goals by this stage – the only problem was that they were leaking them at the other end with 31 goals conceded. This season our defence has conceded a mere 11 goals.

Consistency
One of the factors that Allan Johnston has been keen to demonstrate is consistency, so has he got it?

He has indeed. As our table below shows, Dunfermline have actually improved on their performance in the second quarter, and this is the key to Dunfermline being top of the league at this point. Not as many goals have been scored as in the first quarter, but in any case that tally would have been hard to compete with!

However, with an ever meaner defence, Dunfermline did not lose a single match in the second quarter.There is however, one little caveat. In 2013/14 Dunfermline’s second quarter consistency was good, only for it to fall away in the third and fourth quarters. Maybe this happened because Dunfermline were comfortable in second place and a long way behind Rangers, but that’s not a scenario that we’d want to repeat!

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