Manager post Kilmarnock
Tuesday, 5th Jul 2022Link to audio of James McPake’s post match comments
- - Listen to this James McPake interview
Dunfermline manager James McPake felt that there were a good many positives to take out of the friendly against Kilmarnock:-
“I thought that it was a good runout but I won`t stand here and kid on, I don`t like losing. The players don`t like losing but I think to a man again, they gave us everything. We picked up a couple of injuries and players were going into different positions. We need to strengthen the squad, that`s evident, particularly after tonight we know that.
"But in terms of a preseason we`ve got everything out it that we need. They`re a good side and we threatened them at times. We had chances but we were a wee bit wasteful.
"I can`t criticise them on the whole over the preseason, to a man they`ve worked really hard. Preseason is used as a tool to get what you need out of players and we`ve certainly got that.
"There were lots of positives to take. It`s a shortened preseason - we`re building them towards a real competitive game on Saturday that we need to be up for. We will be, don’t worry about that.
"There were chances but we just weren`t clinical enough - as I said before, they are coming into this very tired, they trained very hard on Monday. They played on Saturday and had their recovery on Sunday. But as a preseason it`s been good.”
What was the issue with Deniz Mehmet?
"He had a little niggle in the warm-up that we didn`t want to take a chance with."
And Rhys Breen?
"He`ll be fine. They are brave, I think Breeny would have stayed out there, Deniz will be fine. We`re at a point where you don`t want to be taking chances and we want to get it right for Saturday.
"I was really pleased with them on the night. You`re asking Kevin O`Hara and Craig Wighton to go into a midfield three and Chris Hamilton to go into centre-back and we had two out-and-out No 9s playing, which was a bit different and caused Kilmarnock a few problems. On the whole there were a few positives to take from tonight.”
What did you make of the trialists’ performances?
“Very good.”
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