Ryan's Embarrassing Day

Wallace vows to battle on in campaign that has get many more twists and turns to come.

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After receiving treatment on his knee from physio Kenny Murray following Saturday's home defeat to Airdrie United, Ryan Wallace spoke to the media and admitted that from a Dunfermline point of view it was a very poor game.

"After going 1-0 down and getting back into it at 1-1, I then had a great chance to put us 2-1 up but overall I thought Airdrie deserved the three points - I thought they were excellent. All over the park they were winning first and second balls. Full credit to Airdrie, they came here, worked hard and deserved all the points."

Ryan dismissed any question of the financial troubles at the Club bothering the playing staff:-

"At the moment the boys have all been paid their wages. The wages are actually nothing to do with us, we are just kept in the loop by the Manager and just go about our day to day job in the way we always did. At the moment and at the time it wasn't playing on anybody's mind either because we were reassured that we would get our wages,

"Everybody has got bills and mortgages to pay, I am sure all you have bills and mortgages to pay but I am here to talk about football, not what is going on behind the scenes at Dunfermline."

The attendance of just over 2800 to watch the top of the table Pars would be as disappointing behind the scenes as it would have been for the players but Ryan felt that was not a problem peculiar to Dunfermline:-

"That's just the way Scottish football is going at the minute. I am sure that if you look at the SPL there wouldn't be a massive crowd there either. We are just hoping that the fans keep coming and we try and put on a show for them, let them enjoy themselves. Obviously I would ask them to come back after that today. It is quite embarrassing but we hope that they come back and we'll try and put on a performance for them next time."

"Embarrassing" was picked up as an especially strong word but Ryan confirmed that was how he felt about the defeat:-

"We got beat 3-1 off a better team who were more hungry. They deserved the three points and I am pretty sure that most of the boys would hold their hands up and say nobody turned up. We know it's embarrassing and that is not acceptable at Dunfermline. When you are sitting top of the league, you are trying to pick up as many points as you can. Partick slipped up today as well and kept us up there but it is getting to the stage where you need to start winning games like this."

Ryan and his team mates desperately want to be left to get on with the football but some would like to draw correlation between off the field affairs and the dropping of vital league points. He replied:-

"During the crisis we did lose games but that wasn't really bothering us because we just focussed on the football."

Had points been taken when expected Dunfermline might have been well ahead at the top of the table. Twenty games into the campaign the Pars sit three points behind leaders Morton and two ahead of third placed Partick who have two games in hand on the top two. Ryan stressed how tough a league the First Division is with example after example cropping up to support the well used phrase that anybody can beat anybody:-

"You can see how second bottom Airdrie came and walked over the top of us. There are still a lot of twists and turns to go, points dropped, points gained. Right now our position in the league means nothing, it is where you are in May when it all matters.

"Obviously there is a pressure to win games. We want to win games, everybody wants to win games. No football player wants to lose a football game ever."

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