Manager post East Fife

26/09/20: Link to audio of Stevie Crawford`s post match comments

Manager Stevie Crawford felt that at this stage it was still not the best that his team could do claiming that even though it was a worthwhile exercise, there is still much more to come.

“In all honesty, in terms of the boys playing passing flowing football were are still a wee bit off it. That has got to be expected but again in their application and attitude, we cannot ask for more.

“We knew that it was going to be competitive today. It was one of the fixtures that we thought was going to be one of the testing ones in pre season because East Fife have put a good squad together. Darren (Young) has a squad that is probably going to be challenging next season at the top of League One so from that side of things, we got what we wanted from the game.

“From the football side we felt that we started the game brightly, creating chances in the first ten minutes and scored a good goal. It is great that we got Kevin (O’Hara) off the mark. I think everyone could see with the smile on his face what it meant to him.

“Then we fell off it a little bit in terms of being able to keep good possession of the ball. I had a wee bit of a nip at them at half time and I thought the first ten minutes of the second half was better, we played football, broke the lines with some passing and although it is a pre season game it is nice to come away with a victory.”

“East Fife face the same challenges as Dunfermline, they played Hearts during the week and lost that game. We go 1-0 up early on in the game so it puts that bit between the teeth. They are a good side, it was a hard fixture but one that we thoroughly enjoyed. We got what we needed to take out of the game.

“After the first ten minutes East Fife gave a reaction, so it is only natural that when we bring new boys into the team it does take time for them to settle. Do I think we have seen the best of us today? No, I think there is more to come but bringing new players into the squad now means that there is competition for places.

“There were some who missed out with a few knocks and bruises that we didn’t want to take a chance on. Hopefully we will get them some game time in the games coming up on Tuesday and Thursday.”

This match was the first that Ryan Dow had taken a part of. Stevie said:-

“It was probably strange, when I spoke to the chairman I said ‘I want to start Ryan rather than him sitting about for an hour’. I would have loved to have given him 45 minutes and he looked like he could have handled it no problem, but for that extra ten to fifteen minutes it would have been silly if he had picked up anything. It was planned to bring him off after the half hour mark and then go to a 4-4-2 and give Lewis (McCann) a chance to play upfront with Kevin.

“There are different things that I have taken from today, getting a chance to see Kerr (McInroy) and Kyle (Turner) in the middle of the park together without having the influence of Steven Whittaker in there. With the injuries we have we were forced into playing with the one striker and Kevin led the line well playing with three in behind him. It was a worthwhile exercise and one that we will take a lot of positives from.”

The manager gave an update on three of the players who missed this match.

“Owain Fôn Williams had a clash and there is a bit of swelling on the outside of his shin. It has taken a little bit longer than we had probably hoped for to start calming down but we are not going to win things playing pre season games and we just have to give him the time that he is going to require on that one.

“Declan (McManus) came on at Stenhousemuir and he just tweaked his hamstring a little bit. He trained towards the end of the week but we don’t want to take any risks on him so he will be involved and get some minutes this week all going well.

“Paul Watson just felt his hip a little bit and needed another 24 hours. Paul is fine and there is no issues for him.”

Next up is a friendly against a Rangers eleven on Tuesday and Stirling Albion on Thursday.

“It will be a chance for us to give boys the right amount of game time. We will have to be mindful of the boys who have played today and then getting the right balance between who plays on Tuesday and who plays on Thursday. We will very much look at these as games to get the right amount of minutes into the legs.”

Related Stories

• East Fife 0 Dunfermline 1
• Sleepless nights ahead for Stevie
• Pars sign on loan Ranger
• Fraser Murray signs for Pars