JAMES MCPAKE has credited the Athletic hierarchy with giving him their support during a testing winless run and says he never felt that his position was under threat.
And the Pars boss believes that he has become better at "blanking out" criticism that a difficult period of results can bring and continue to focus on the job at hand.
McPake was named as the Glen's Championship Manager of the Month for March, after guiding Dunfermline to four wins from six matches, taking them firmly into promotion play-off contention.
However, until they secured a 3-1 win over Partick Thistle in February, the Pars had gone nine games without a victory, picking up just four points during that sequence.
It also included successive home defeats, 5-0 to Greenock Morton, and 3-0 to Queen's Park, which set alarm bells ringing amongst some supporters.
Although he maintains that the club's well-documented injury problems this season were not an excuse for those two matches, McPake feels that the club's board understood the difficulties facing - and add additional pressure.
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When asked if winning the award, his first of the season, was nicer due to the difficulties that had gone before, he explained: "I had it [criticism] often enough at Dundee as well, and came away with a few manager of the month awards and a manager of the year award and promotion to the Premiership.
"I still class myself as a young, inexperienced manager. I’m not even 40 yet.
"I’m better at blanking it out now. As a player, I went through a phase at the start of social media where I couldn’t blank it out, but I’ve learned and done a lot of work on myself to get away from it.
"I don’t want to criticise and make it look like I don’t care what people are thinking and saying. Of course, they’re fans of the football club and they’re all entitled to their opinion. Add into that, the fans from the other club who sing the songs about getting sacked in the morning. I think I’ve had that at every ground.
"It’s fine, it’s water off a duck’s back, if I’m honest. I got plenty of stick when I was a player as well.
"When your eight and nine-year-old start telling me I should be getting sacked, that’s when I’ll start getting worried, but they’ve not said that yet! They still want to come to the games.
"I believe I’ve learned a lot from my time at Dundee in that respect, from bad runs and half-decent runs - and bad runs are always a lot worse than what good runs are good.
"When it’s a bad run, it’s an absolute disaster, and when it’s a good run, it’s expected.
"Regardless of what kind of run you’re on you need to keep your head on what you’re doing and keep working hard.
"I must admit, and I’m sure the board will not mind me saying it, I genuinely didn’t feel under any pressure at all here.
"Now, had we had this full squad and we had gone nine games without a win then, I can’t say, but it could have been different. I don’t know. But they understand football and they see what we’re trying to do here.
"We’re trying to build a football club, in terms of a way of playing and producing our own players and, when you strip it back, the last time we were in this league, we got relegated.
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"That was the main thing, come in to this league, don’t get relegated, get to 40 points. I’m not saying we’re away from trouble.
"We’re still at risk, as is every team outside Partick, Dundee United and Raith. Every team outside those three will still have an eye on what’s happening with Inverness and the teams round about that. Arbroath look like they’re running out of games but you never know in this league, mad things can happen.
"The first aim was to get to 40 points, we’re on 41, and now it’s how quickly can we add to that as well?
"From the conversations I had with the board, from my take on it, at no point did me and Dave feel like we had to win the next game or we were going to lose our job or anything like that.
"We were very well supported and very well backed, in terms of that support coming from Thomas (Meggle), from David (Cook), from Nick (Teller) and the rest of the board, all of them, and the conversations with them."
McPake continued: "You just had to look at the injuries we had and you could see why there was a bit of a struggle.
"That’s not taking anything away from two games in particular where injuries are no excuse.
"Against Morton and Queen’s Park at home, those days we could never even look at using injuries as an excuse.
"It certainly helped me going forward and taught me a lot in saying I would never come out and use injuries as an excuse. I wasn’t trying to kid anyone on. I just genuinely didn’t want to use injuries as an excuse.
"But it’s only now you get them all back and you see the standard going up in training and you think, ‘wow, it did have a real affect’.
"What I hadn’t thought about was using the same players day-in, day-out and asking them to play week-in, week-out, even when they’re carrying niggles.
"That wasn’t easy and we didn’t have enough young lads who were ready. Andrew Tod is one who has proven he can handle it but he was out. Taylor Sutherland has proved he can handle coming on and he will eventually be a first-team player at this club, I’m sure.
"It’s now when you watch training that you think, ‘that did have a big impact’.
"But there’s still a lot of work to do now. As you saw on Saturday in the second-half, we can still be hopeless at times with a strong team."
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