It is usual for managers to share the praise of monthly awards with their backroom staff and players. For James McPake, the Dunfermline board also deserve a prominent name-check.
The Pars boss has been named Championship manager of the month for March following four wins from six games.
Saturday’s 3-2 triumph over Arbroath, which still elicited criticism from McPake, represented the first time this season the Fifers had pieced together three consecutive victories.
Sitting fifth in the Championship, they now have an opportunity to push for a promotion play-off spot in the final five games of a turbulent campaign.
It is all a far cry from the turn of the year when the East End Park men went nine games without a win – and sat ninth – before ending a nightmare sequence with a 3-1 success at Partick Thistle in late February.
Boos were the order of the day from fans angered by heavy back-to-back losses to Morton and Queen’s Park. And the murmurs of discontent threatened to swell into calls for McPake to be sacked.
However, a horrendous injury list that robbed the team of key personnel, was seen as mitigation enough by the club’s hierarchy, who have since been rewarded for their level-headedness by the team’s current run of form.
“The kids enjoy playing with them,” joked McPake of his trophy. “I think they’ve got three or four each now. But they’ve maybe been wondering why none have been brought home this season!
“Look, awards are good and personal awards are good. But without the fantastic staff I’ve got working beside me or the players then I wouldn’t be sitting talking about it.”
McPake: ‘Better at blanking out criticism’
Asked about the darker days of earlier in the season, McPake added: “I had it [criticism] often enough at Dundee as well, and came away with a few manager of the month awards and a manager of the year award, and promotion to the Premiership.
“I still class myself as a young, inexperienced manager. I’m not even 40 yet.
“I’m better at blanking it out now. As a player, I went through a phase at the start of social media where I couldn’t blank it out.
“But I’ve learned and done a lot of work on myself to get away from it.
“I don’t want to criticise and make it look like I don’t care what people are thinking and saying. Of course, they’re fans of the football club and they’re all entitled to their opinion.
“Add into that the fans from the other club who sing the songs about getting sacked in the morning. I think I’ve had that at every ground.
“It’s fine, it’s water off a duck’s back, if I’m honest. I got plenty of stick when I was a player as well.
“When my eight and nine-year-olds start telling me I should be getting sacked, that’s when I’ll start getting worried. But they’ve not said that yet! They still want to come to the games.”
Dunfermline occupied the dreaded second-bottom spot in the Championship as recently as barely six weeks ago.
McPake: ‘Board understand football’
A more trigger-happy board would have been tempted to panic at that point and jettison the manager amidst unhappiness from the support.
However, McPake is adamant that, at no point, did he ever feel his job was under threat.
“I must admit, and I’m sure the board will not mind me saying it, I genuinely didn’t feel under any pressure at all here,” he said.
“Now, had we had this full squad and we had gone nine games without a win then, I can’t say, but it could have been different. I don’t know.
“But they understand football and they see what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to build a football club, in terms of a way of playing and producing our own players.
“From the conversations I had with the board, from my take on it, at no point did me and Dave [Mackay, assistant] feel like we had to win the next game or we were going to lose our job or anything like that.
“We were very well supported and very well backed, in terms of that support coming from Thomas [Meggle, sporting director], from David [Cook, CEO and chairman}, from Nick [Teller, director] and the rest of the board, all of them.”
