Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Welcome break for Dee – James
ALTHOUGH he is looking for wa rd to thei r fi rst match in over a fortnight, Dundee manager James McPake is delighted with how they’ve spent their break.
The Dark Blues have been out of action due to the Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer Challenge Cup since the 2-0 derby defeat to Dundee United at Dens Park a fortnight ago.
However, they return to league action at Inverness tomorrow.
In that enforced break, the Dee have welcomed the return of Jordan Marshall, Jamie Ness and Josh Meekings to full fitness and have taken on tough bounce game tests in the form of St Johnstone and Hibs.
With his whole squad, minus goalkeeper Jack Hamilton who is out after appendix surgery, available for the trip to the Highland capital, James admits he has some tough decisions to make.
He said: “That’s what we want, that was the plan when you build a squad.
“You hope everybody is fit every week and ready to go but the reality is they never usually are.
“That’s why you need strength in depth but having them all back gives me some good decisions to make.”
And, for James, their fortnight away from competitive action has flown in.
Asked if it has been a long two weeks, he added: “It’s not been, no. We’ve had two games in between which I’m glad we took now.
“Sometimes those games are about getting the young boys out and getting people with long-term injuries back but we used them to work on things.
“It helped that Hibs brought a full first team with their new manager while St Johnstone had a very decent side out as well with players that had been coming back from injury.
“In the space of two weeks we’ve had two good games where we’ve been able to do some real good training as well.”
Dundee were due to face ICT last weekend but the game was moved forward with the Caley Jags in Challenge Cup quarterfinal action, where they saw off Clyde on penalties.
And James revealed the only person that delay in games has irked is his wife.
“We’d booked a weekend away so as you can imagine she’s delighted to be away with three kids and I’m here!”