Dark days – McPake understands frustrations of angry supporters

Dundee boss James McPake admitted he fully understood the fans’ frustration as they vented their anger at the players following the full-time whistle at Dens yesterday.

The Dark Blues had just been humbled by League 2 part-timers Elgin City with boos ringing out from the home support.

However, McPake agreed the reaction was inevitable following a result and display that was simply not acceptable.

When asked if he could understand the fans’ reaction, McPake said: “Absolutely. They are the people who come week in, week out no matter who is in charge of this football club. So I do understand.

“I need to look at what our team did wrong today and as a group over the next couple of days we need to sit down and dig deep to work out what is going wrong.

“Because that second half was really, really poor.

“It doesn’t matter who you are playing, that second-half display was nowhere near acceptable for a club this size.”

McPake had selected a strong-looking line-up against Elgin and he rejected any suggestions that Dundee had been in any way complacent against the team from two leagues below.

McPake: “That was another level of performance that was really poor.

“It was going OK and not much more than that in the first half. You ask for a reaction and you look for a reaction. We said to them at half-time when you are only one goal in front you are vulnerable.

“Fair play to Elgin, they deserved to win the game there is no doubt about that. But it is a really disappointing one again.

“There wasn’t any complacency from the start. When you look at the team selection, we were strong. So no, there wasn’t complacency – we just weren’t good enough.

“It was a very strong team and it was a team that if they were right and they did things properly then they should have won the game of football.”

James McPake said the fans’ reaction to the defeat was inevitable.