McPake has high hopes for loan duo
JAMES McPAKE reckons Dundee starlets Josh Mulligan and Luke Strachan will be ready to fight for a first-team berth following formative loan spells in League Two.
The Dens Park manager believes the talented teenagers will return to the club with a wealth of experience between them after loan spells of very differing fortunes.
Scotland youth internationalist Mulligan played 11 times for Paul Hartley’s Cove Rangers and the 17-year-old ended the campaign as a title-winner. By contrast Strachan, 19, joined Brechin in February and, although his stint at Glebe Park was fleeting, he experienced a club fighting for its life at the bottom of the league.
They will both want to kick on and push for regular football at Dundee this season and can draw inspiration from McPake’s willingness to regularly field 17-year-old Fin Robertson and give a debut to fellow kid Lyall Cameron.
McPake said: “Josh Mulligan went out and won a league title with Cove Rangers and Luke Strachan went out to Brechin and played proper football there.
“Luke will have experienced that pressure to battle at the bottom of the league and the pressure of fighting for survival.
“Josh didn’t play as often as he would have liked but even that is a learning curve - he’s seen how much of a challenge it is to fight for his place in a senior dressing room.
“The standards required to get in a very good Cove side are sky-high and he’ll bring that back to Dundee.”