Dundee boss Steven Pressley aware of importance of Livingston game

Dundee head coach Steven Pressley admits beating teams such as Livingston is vital as his side chase their first William Hill Premiership win of the season against David Martindale’s side.

But Pressley also offered “context” for critics of Dundee’s start to the campaign.

The former Falkirk manager came under fire after starting his Dens Park career with defeats by Airdrie and Alloa to exit the Premier Sports Cup and his team were booed off the park at half-time after being outplayed by Motherwell last weekend.

However, they improved significantly in the second half and claimed their third point from five matches.

“We obviously want to get our first win and I think that’s important,” Pressley said.

“I think, where we are, that it’s important that we do get results against teams that are around us and Livingston may be one of those teams. So it’s a big game for us at the weekend.”

Dundee have also claimed draws with Kilmarnock and Rangers on the road as well as losing at home to Hibernian and Dundee United.

“The difficulty that I have sometimes, managers have in football, is that people just look at the results and there’s absolutely no context to anything,” Pressley said. “My job is to sometimes bring context. Not to look for excuses, to bring context.

“When I look at the Hibernian game, the first game of the season, we were struggling to get a team on the pitch with players that weren’t even fit out there.”

Pressley pointed out that new signings such as Yan Dhanda, Joe Westley, Cameron Congreve and Ethan Hamilton had arrived after the season began.

“We were very much without all of these players for the next three games,” he said. “During those three games, I’ll be honest, from where we were, for us to take two points was a really, really solid start for us.

“I think that we’d have bitten your hand off at that time when I looked where the squad was.

“Now the challenge is to go from just finding a way to get results, trying to be solid defensively, difficult to beat, to being a team that’s a little bit more progressive.

“Again, it’s a challenge fitting the players in, trying to get us to change because, I’ll remind people, we were a team that lost more goals than any other team last season.

“So we’re trying to become more solid but also we’re trying to improve offensively. In the first half on Saturday, that wasn’t the case. There was no real signs of what we’d been trying to do in the last 10 days.

“But then the signs began to show in the second half and now we’ve got to try and build on that.

“It’s going to take time, it’s going to take perseverance, it’s going to take some real struggle, real difficulties.

“But I think we can get through this and I think we can start seeing green shoots and I think we can eventually see a team that I really hope that our supporters are proud of.”