First quarter review
Wednesday, 23rd Oct 201923/10/19: SC - “There is progression and development in the team but no way have we reached the heights that we are hoping to reach yet.”
Stevie Crawford looked back over the first quarter of the Championship season fresh with the lift from a first home victory. He said:-
“It was sort off hanging over us, we are four undefeated but when we look back on the first quarter, probably the first half of the game against Dundee United was the one game where we were opened up.
“We weren’t quite at the races for whatever reason. Some people would say it was the high of the Celtic game but it is the one game where I thought we really struggled to handle the threat of Dundee United.
“We regrouped and I thought we started the second half well enough with a couple of early chances to get back in the game but other than that there has not been much in the games.”
The league after nine matches shows a gap of just ten points difference between top and bottom. Having won two and drawn four, the Pars on 10 points are just two points off the final play off place, Stevie added:-
“We could have had more points on board but as I have said we are a club that is hoping to progress young players as well and they will have taken a lot out of that first quarter that will hold us well for the rest of the season.
“When you do your homework on teams and listen to other managers, every manager seems to be saying the same thing. Again it shows the competitive side of the league and the competitive challenges that are are there that they think that they have dropped points.
“It is actually physically doing it and the greatest encouragement for us at the weekend was when going 2-1 down against an Ayr United side that have been a really good threat going forward in the first quarter.
“They have a decent front line, good legs about them and they were a team on form in terms of scoring goals. We managed to create chances ourselves, we could have had more goals. We could have had a penalty in the opening minutes of the game.
“It was an entertaining game of football. I said when I came in last year, the difference between trying to grind out a result and now trying to let players go out and try to show a flair, without saying that we are playing amazing football.
“We are now looking an attacking threat. We are scoring goals from different areas of the pitch and sometimes when you go out and attack you also leave yourself a little bit more vulnerable at the back. It is trying to learn from situations and shut the back door while keeping creative.”
“We have been tested with a few injuries over the first quarter. I don’t think the boys went under. We went down to Morton, it was disappointing to lose a goal as late on in the game but when you look at what we had available to us that day, it was basically every man that we had left fit.
“Cappielow is a hard place to and I thought with our second half performance we merited coming away with the three points, but we didn’t. It brings added pressure when you are pulled down to ninth place at the end of that game.
“The boys responded, so it shows that we have a wee bit about ourselves. It would have been easy on Saturday to have possibly lost the game 2-1 or manage to get back into it at two each and say ‘we will accept the point’ but they had a belief in themselves to keep driving forward.
“There is progression and development in the team but no way have we reached the heights that we are hoping to reach yet.”
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