Manager post Clyde
Tuesday, 18th Oct 202218/10/22: Link to audio of James McPake’s post match comments
- - Listen to this James McPake interview
Dunfermline manager James McPake was delighted with the goal in the third minute of added time that sealed his team’s win away to Clyde. He described how it wasn’t exactly what he had planned at that point in the match:-
“We knew that we were into the last 45 seconds, we had got word from the linesman so ‘Matty run the ball into the corner, don’t do anything silly with it, will you’. What does he do? With left foot, wrong foot right over the goalie’s head. I was delighted for him, brilliant, superb!”
Can we assume shoot wasn’t going through your mind?
“To be fair Dave Mackay said it to Aaron (Comrie) to shoot but I was thinking ‘don’t shoot’ but it was great decision from Aaron as well to give it into the middle of the pitch because he could have thought ‘just keep it and see the game out’ because at that point the game was done.
“Peterhead was still in your mind and you were going oh no. It was a game where we were really dominant, I thought we were excellent with some of the football we played. I sound like a broken record, coming out and moaning when there are teams scoring more goals than us but that is football. Some of the football that was played tonight by that Dunfermline team was brilliant.
“Maybe I’m just a bit excited and I will watch the game back, probably tonight because I enjoyed it that much. Wighton was inches away when he cut inside and the move for Wighton’s goal involving Chris Mochrie again. I don’t need to keep on about them but defensively it was a big one for us tonight because that looked like a completely different animal to the Peterhead one.
“It just looked like we weren’t going to concede and they could have played all night and done all different types of things whereas against Peterhead they were a bit edgy. Deniz in the goal, the back three where Sam Fisher was excellent again, although he should have scored a hattrick but I’m delighted again for the boys.”
You didn’t look like conceding a chance, never mind conceding a goal?
“You when you are standing on the side, it is the Peterhead thing in your memory from a couple of weeks ago. I’m asking how long to go and Dave is saying eight and that’s going to be the longest eight minutes ever. Then when we go in he shows me the stats and I think they have had two shots. I don’t know if they were on target but when you are standing here, you think that you are under pressure but that’s just your natural instinct to think that something is going to go wrong.
“Again we had worked hard but there are game when you come off and when you look at the Falkirk game for example. I could have come out and said a one was a fair result so I think on the basis of what I say I think that I’m quite unbiased in what I say about the team. If I think my team has been poor then I will say it but if they were good I will say that they were really good. I think tonight they were excellent.”
Relief to win or celebration of the goal at the end?
“No, that’s the best goal that I have ever managed! I can imagine if I had been on the park, I would have been running about daft. No, we have had so many setbacks in football. Not just this football club but probably every player in there.
“I’ve had so many setbacks and you don’t get many good times in football, that’s the way the game is, it always finds a way of kicking you and hurting you. Knocking you down when you think that you are doing alright, like against Peterhead when you think that you have scraped it. When you get moments like that if you don’t celebrate it, you are as well sitting in the house.
“My wife and three kids are in Spain at the minute and I know that they were watching it on PARStv and they would have been jumping up and down as much as I was. That is one of the goals I wish we could recreate because it was good fun.”
Important to remember Matty Todd’s role in your first goal tonight because it was a brilliant goal?
“I think that summed us up at when we were at our best tonight. We got after them quick, we moved it quick and then all of a sudden it was a chance. That and setplays, I thought that we were excellent. I should say excellent deliveries from setplays followed by poor finishes. We could have had two or three goals, Sam Fisher alone but he was excellent in what he did.
“We will get that right, we will keep working on it - you know how much I’m big on that. Over the course of the season they will play a massive part in how successful we will be or we won’t be.
“The first goal was excellent, Matty goes after the ball and there are not many people who can press the way that he can press. He wins it back, drives with it and the pass is on to slip it to Mochrie. He opens his body and slides it to Wighty and that is the Wighty I know - a calm finish, bang.
“I’m delighted for him. It is another goal for him but in his all around performance we are starting to see he is physical again. He was playing up top with a partner round about him but their number ten was causing us a wee bit of bother so Wighty was then dropping into a hole. It sounds daft because their number ten was at the other end but he was helping with the overload with Joe.
“His second ‘goal’ would have been a wonder goal, that would have been vintage Wighton - the player that I can remember and that I’m excited about seeing that come back now. I’m seeing that in training.
“I was right behind it and I was looking at that thinking ‘that is in’. As soon as he checked inside I thought that’s it game done, 2-0. It was inches (wide) but that’s his sharpness coming back. When he is sharp then I tell you we have one of the best players not just in this league but the league above and that’s the truth.
“When Craig Wighton is fit and at it, he is one of the best players in the Championship, I have been in it long enough and he is a Premierleague player. It is our job to get him up to that and as a team they deserve all the credit tonight.”
Asked if Lewis McCann was okay after being helped off the park, the manager said “no” and explained what happened to his 64th minute substitute:-
“It is a bad hamstring injury. I am gutted for him. He is in there, he is devastated but the one thing that I will guarantee I can safely say about this football club - I have only been here three or four months but the way that they have looked after injured players, or players who have been ill.
“We will go to the best people. The medical team will assess him tomorrow, we will get it scanned. Whatever needs done, hopefully it is nothing then it is just a rehab job but he will certainly see the best person that we can find to look at that hamstring. The club is magnificent in that and deserve huge credit for that because, I’ll be honest with you there are not enough clubs in Scotland do that. And that is talking from experience.”
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