It's been another busy week, as well as the usual training schedule and analyse of last weekend's trip to Paisley, I was down in Dumfries on Monday evening to attend the AGM. It was good to meet with the shareholders and hopefully I answered the questions they had. Then on Tuesday night I took in the re-arranged game between Alloa and Morton, the draw was another good result from our point of view.
This weekend we return to Palmerston for the second of our back to back meetings with St Mirren.
It was a very quiet dressing room after the game in Paisley last Saturday - we were deflated and very frustrated after putting so much into the game and ending up with nothing to show for our efforts. I felt we dominated for the majority of the match and created the better chances against a very experienced side. I'm sure both sets of fans who attending the game would agree.
The only goal of the game came from what we see as a soft free kick, but we didn't defend properly against a dangerous player who strikes the ball well. It was one- way traffic in the second half, albeit they looked dangerous on the break as we piled bodies forward. Unfortunately Jamie Langfield pulled off some great saves to deny Jake Pickard, who I felt gave another solid performance and the woodwork denied Ryan Conroy and we just couldn't get the ball over the line.
Although it certainly wasn’t the result we wanted, the players deserve credit for their performance. We have licked our wounds and will be looking for the same again, with a bit more this afternoon , we know we need to be more clinical in the final third.
We had hoped to add a striker in the transfer window, but despite endless hard work, the deals we tried to secure didn’t work out. We can still bring in loan and out of contract players so we will still continue to pursue fresh faces.
We weren’t at our best the last time Saints visited Palmerston, so will be looking to put that along with last weekend’s result right With the squad that Alex has built, they’re trying to close the gap and pull themselves into the mix and come down on the back of two wins, but we will be looking to claim the three points to open up the gap again to push ourselves up the league table.
I’d say that there’s five teams fighting it out for fourth spot, but we’ve shown we are a match for any of them and it remains our aim to be the team that finishes in the play-offs.
Captain, Chris Higgins was back in the mix last week with a seat on the bench, having him back available is good news. Callum Tapping has trained well and is getting closer to being available for selection and Dale Hilson has been back in full training for the last couple of weeks as he continues his recovery.
We have no fresh injury worries.