By Matty Blakeman
August 14 2002

The Third Edition to Matty Blakemans weekly article this time labled Time for a Victory. Matty talks of memorys of the last time that we beat Dunfermline and predicts the score for this week.

Time for a Victory

Having been full of hope and optimism last week following the Hearts game and talk of Gazza coming to Dens, we were all brought down to earth with a poor performance against Rangers and news of Gascoigne going to Portsmouth instead. Things never really got going against what was a far from inspiring Rangers team although it could have been worse had Speroni not been on top form but then again when has he not been on top form? However it could have been oh so different had wee Nacho-man squared the ball to…. coming to think about it, Sara would have probably missed it anyway. Only Mark DeVries’s bagful of goals kept us of the bottom for the first time in years.

This week takes us to a bogey team of ours in recent years in Dunfermiline. We’ve failed to beat them in our last five attempts and in fact the last time we beat them was in Ivano’s first home game in charge at Dens in a 3-0 victory way back in August 2000. I remember that game well. Sara and Caballero both scored their first for the club from second half penalties. It was also the day of possibly the quickest ever S.P.L. goal (12 sec o.g. from Justin Skinner) and the day we were introduced to the “Jesus Loved You” T-Shirts. It was also the last and only time in recent memory that we topped the S.P.L. table. This, as always, is a game that we can more than win. Even though Dunfermilne look in better shape than they have done in years and many are tipping them for a top 4 finish. But then again, many tipped us for a top 4 finish last year and we successfully failed in doing so, so what do the pundits know? Following their win over Livingston, the Pars will be favourites to win this one which makes us underdogs, a role we far better at playing than we are at playing favourites so this gives a perfect chance for our first win of the season.

Many week confused by Duffy’s striker selection last week, dropping the impressive Caballero instead of the unreliable Sara for the uninspiring Milne. Sara seems unlikely to hit water whilst standing on a boat at the moment but he has had a many a dry patch like this one before and more often that not, he bounces back to form. I, personally, would still him keep upfront for the sake of what he can do and that we need a target man. Caballero would, of course be the second striker with Savo on the bench. I’m not one of the many who have lost belief in Savo at the moment. I think he’s still quite short on both confidence and match practice. He’s won games for us before and he can still do it again.

As for Saturday, it’s bit early to be at the “must win” stage of the season but we’re still not that far away from it this weekend. We need a win and I think we’ll get one. Sara will score in a 2-1 victory.