Peterhead returned to Dens Park to face Dundee for a second pre-season friendly on Tuesday night and went down 4-0 with the Dark Blues establishing a three goal cushion at the break before adding a fourth goal during a much more even second 45 minutes.
Dundee youngster Ewan Murray gave his side an early advantage with Max Anderson adding a second before Dundee’s new loan signing from Celtic, Jonathan Afolabi, cracked home from the edge of the box before the break.
Former Scotland midfielder Charlie Adam completed the scoring midway through the second half however Balmoor manager Jim McInally was far from downbeat.
McInally explained: “The score-line does not look great but it is not something I am getting hung up on. The first half was all about trying out a new system and learning from it. In the second half we changed things and did a lot better.”
“We went into the game with a very different set-up as we face a very difficult first game of the season at Tannadice against a Dundee United side who have been up and running in terms of playing competitive games for a couple of months now. The formation we used had been tried in training but training is different from games and we ended up allowing Dundee to have too much possession.”
“They took advantage and scored three times but we learned a lot that we would not have learned if we had not tried it before we played Dundee United.”
Jim added: “We made three changes at the break and changed the formation. Andrew McCarthy, Steven Boyd and Ben Armour came on and we were much more on the front foot. We created chances and no-one at Dundee would have complained if we had grabbed a couple of goals.”
“The second half was really encouraging in terms of options we have for the new season.”
There were other options in terms of minutes on the pitch with Jim saying: “Simon Ferry returned and got 45 minutes under his belt and Gary Mackenzie got some more game time as well. Kyle Bailey and Jason Brown played alongside each other for a good part of the game, Kieran Freeman looked good again and Derek Lyle got a late run-out as well so there were plenty of positives.”
© Craig Stewart/ Peterhead Football Club
Peterhead
1 Wilson
2 Freeman
3 Conroy
4 Brown
5 Mackenzie
6 Ferry
7 Trialist A
8 Brown
9 Layne3
10 Fraser
11 Cook
12 Boyd
14 McCarthy2
15 Armour
16 Lyle
17 Trialist B
18 Trialist C
