The fact that his club has now gone three games without a loss makes James McPake happy, and he hopes to build on that in the next two league games, which are all at home. The wonderful news that Kyle Benedictus will be included in the team for Saturday was also announced by him. During lunch, he said the following:
“We’re thrilled to have won last Friday night, even if travelling to Inverness is never easy. It wasn’t a really good football match, but we performed fairly well in it. Whatever you want to call it—boring, bad, or whatever—you still had to play defence and make big saves.
There was no better save than Deniz Mehmet’s 18th-minute penalty stop of Billy McKay, the captain of Inverness Caley Thistle, albeit James continues to disagree that it was a penalty in the first place:-
“It seems like a foul to us. Cammy Kerr does a good job of getting on it, but I believe it’s a foul because of how high his foot is. it’s a foul on Paul (Allan) but justice was done with the save. There wasn’t really much else. Den doesn’t have much to do, Jak has the chance and we had a couple of dangerous setplays that came to nothing. It was a good performance in terms of the clean sheet. We’re looking solid again, so hopefully we can take that into Saturday.”
Not only did Ayr United triumph in their last two away league games at Airdrie and Queen’s Park, but they also won their season’s first game against KDM Group East End Park in October. Without a doubt, the manager has seen Saturday’s thrilling 4-3 triumph over Partick Thistle on Tuesday. Ayr had the perfect response after what could have appeared to be a depressing 2-1 home loss to Raith Rovers. When he was at Somerset Park, James warned him not to miss that one.
This season, they have defeated us and drawn with us after we had defeated them 2-0. Their operations have slightly altered, as you would expect from any time a new manager takes over. It will be a tough game.”
This season, Dunfermline has gained 18 points from 13 away games, as opposed to merely 11 from its twelve home games. Following their nine-game losing streak, James would like to see an improvement in his team’s home performance:
“We’ve had greater success away from home than we did the previous year,” It’s true that we need to start winning games again. Remove the Arbroath game from the equation. We were disappointed in that game because we produced enough opportunities to win it, but they caught us at a setplay.
The importance of a victory
“Any time you’re away to Partick and away to Inverness, if they said you’ll win one and draw one, you would take it. You wouldn’t care what way round it was. Looking from the outside, given the way Partick were going and where they are in the league in comparison to Inverness, it probably looked more likely to go to Maryhill and get a draw and win at Inverness if the four points were a guarantee.
“The big thing was just to get the win again. It had been going on for so long. It wasn’t papering over it but I was probably getting annoyed and the players were probably getting fed up hearing that we had done well but hadn’t won the game. We needed that feeling again and I’m delighted we could get it last Friday night.
“I know there were moments in the Partick game where goals were disallowed and other things, but I still believe we played well enough to win. Despite the fact that Thistle’s second goal was onside, I believe we had the better opportunities in the game, including one from Matty Todd that struck the post. I would argue whether or not their first attempt was onside; I believe it was off, but once Brad missed the ball, we were fortunate.
