Managers post Buckie Thistle

Manager Allan Johnston was smiling after watching his team safely through to the Fourth Round of the William Hill Scottish Cup. The 5-3 win over Highland League, Buckie Thistle was every bit as tough as he had anticipated:-

"The most important thing in games like this is getting through to the next round and we did that. We will certainly need to improve because we made like really different for ourselves.

"Look at the scoreline, when we score five goals we expect to be miles in front. Buckie pushed us all the way and put a lot of pressure on us in the last five minutes."

End to end, eight goals with the lead being conceded twice, it was a classic cup tie, the manager agreed:-

"It must have been brilliant for the fans to watch. Credit to Buckie, I thought they had some really good players. Obviously McLeod, up front has scored a lot of goals, 33 now and Fraser in the middle of the park who is a very talented player as well. They caused us problems but when you score five goals you should comfortably win the game.

"When you go ahead, you don`t expect to lose a goal within thirty seconds. That was poor, all the goals we lost today were poor goals. I thought we had cut our game but we certainly need to defend better to give ourselves a chance of winning games."

Local media were keen to hear the Pars gaffer`s views on Buckie Thistle.

"They did brilliantly, a lot of credit goes to them because they battled all the way. They gave everything and you could see that there were guys taking cramp. They were really unlucky not to get something. The most important thing for us was making sure that we were in the draw for the next round."

Allan Johnston was delighted by the contribution made by his wide players:-

"I thought Kallum Higginbotham was excellent when he came on and Paul McMullan on the other side, his goal was something special. We should really be talking about that never mind some of the bad goals we lost defensively because it was a bit of magic."

Given the troubles earlier in the season scoring from the penalty spot, Michael Paton converted the second in succession. Higginbotham had stopped the rot by netting against Hibs but he was not on the park when keeper Ross Salmon took down Michael Moffat in the box.

"I am surprised that Michael Paton went up to take it to be honest, I thought Moff would have been first to the ball. There were some good goals. I thought Kallum Higginbotham came on and did well. He gave us a spark in the second half, a wee bit of quality. I don`t know how Nicky Clark did not score, he had a lot of chances."

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