Manager on Thursday
Thursday, 29th Sep 201629/09/16: The result against St Mirren had taken long time coming, claimed manager Allan Johnston
In his weekly media interview pre match on Thursday lunchtime, the Pars boss said:-
"It was great, I have said before that I don`t think that we have been far away in a few games. We have played well and maybe not got the breaks or made a bad error.
"The boys showed a lot of quality, a lot of character and thoroughly deserved the win. I think it should have been by more, there should have been a bigger gap between the sides but we made it difficult for ourselves.
"We got the luck this time but sometimes you make your own luck. The boys work rate was brilliant. There was a lot of good individual play but as a team I thought that we were much better than St Mirren but we have to make sure that we maintain that, keep improving and hopefully climb our way up the table.
"It is great when you see your strikers scoring goals. It gives the whole team a lift and it wasn`t just their goals, I thought Nicky (Clark) and Gav (Reilly)`s work rate was brilliant and sets the tone for the rest of the team, there was a lot of quality play.
"Farid came on and scored the winner, so he made an impact as well. We still have Michael Moffat and we have Hoppy (David Hopkirk) coming back so we have a lot of competition there and a lot of good players. That is probably the difference between the top end of the league and the bottom end of the league - goalscorers - and I think we have goalscorers."
AJ acknowledged that coming on as a sub to make an impact is a hard task:-
"Farid gave us something different just with his physical presence. He was unlucky not to score from an earlier chance. The main thing is that he is getting fitter every week. He missed a lot of pre season and not played as many games as the other boys so has taken a big of time to catch up but I think he will do well."
Anticipating all eventualities throughout the season, AJ stressed that it is important to have quality players who can come in and back up the rest of the team.
"It is frustrating when you are not playing but their attitude has been first class."
Saturday`s fixture takes them to Somerset Park to face Ayr United, a team that they know well because they met five times last season. The manager commented:-
"Ayr are a hard team to play against. We had a lot of close games, Ayr obviously beat us here and we beat them there. It is going to be a competitive game, they have freshened up their squad by bringing in new players. We know they have a lot of quality in their team and seemingly they were unlucky last week against Falkirk. They have been a bit unlucky this season with results.
"It is always a difficult place to go but everybody is playing for their place and want to stay in the team. It is all about competition, results and making sure we get as many results as possible.
"We have quality players and if we play to our potential we will be a really good team."
The manager watched David Hopkirk come through the Development League match against Hearts on Wednesday night and he described his other `injured` players as just "niggles".
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