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danny lennon after dumbarton victory

Absolutely terrific today with three quality goals, a clean sheet and some very good football, coming in with such a short period of time, it is good to see, I know throughout the season the team have showed how good they can be and for me this week was all about building up their confidence and they certainly went out there with that and put on a very good display and showed just how good players they are.

The thing with the three teams at our end of the league, there will be more twists and turns before the end of the season, you have three highly motivated teams that are doing everything they can to try and make sure they can give themselves an opportunity to stay in this league, a league which will be every bit as competitive next season. Cowdenbeath have had a couple of decent, positive results and Livingston have had three very positive results lately and we had a very good win today so it is certainly in all three clubs hands.  I have no doubt there will be twists and turns from now until the beginning of May.

It’s important you look after your own performances and results and out of the three games left another two are at home and we need to make them count. At this stage I haven’t even worked with the players on Tuesday, Paddy and Jim Butter took the session, I observed the game on Wednesday night, there were pleasing things there,  the players had the night off on Thursday after the Hearts game, because it was important they were fresh for today’s game against Dumbarton, I thought it was important they recovered both physically and mentally before today’s game.

I could have gone on and talked about tactics but if they were not fit enough for today’s game then tactics go out the window. We came in today went over certain things on the tactics board before the game and I was absolutely delighted how the players showed great intelligence taking this on board and more importantly getting their rewards on the park, there was a lot of pleasing things today but there were also things I saw which we can improve on as well. I was asked if I was exhausted after my pitch side following of the game, but the thing is I have never had a bad game in six years, up and down that line winning headers, I don’t know how it finished 3-0 because I thought I had scored six!  Nobody expected us to go to Hearts and do anything, It was an opportunity for me watching some very brave performances at a ground that players like to go and test how they are doing.

After the Petrofac Cup game the players were certainly disappointed throughout the week but when I addressed the players on Tuesday for five/ ten minutes before training, one of the first things I said was “They would be bitterly disappointed about Sunday but they must make sure that goes out of the system very quickly and the players look forward, because what this club can do is that we can still have good success this season and surviving in this league would be a fantastic achievement for the club with the resources we have.

All our games will now be huge games, Queen of the South will be our next opponents and it is highly completive at the other end of the division, so we know it will not be a meaningless game for either club, but what we have to do this week at training is to build on today’s clean sheet and continue the good work of today. I freshened one or two things up today which gives me an opportunity to see the depth we have in the squad, I was delighted John Gibson came in and collected a few good balls, you can see the presence he has so I was pleased collectively for him and the team performance, it is always good to keep a clean sheet. There is no doubt they have showed just how good players they can be and deserve the right to be competing to stay in the Championship and all they need is a bit of guidance to build back their confidence.