Dunfermline: James McPake gives Chris Kane injury update

The 29-year-old, who joined the club permanently from St Johnstone in the summer following a successful loan spell, will sit out Dunfermline's final Premier Sports Cup Group E fixture at KDM Group East End Park.

A second half appearance in their first match in the competition - at The Spartans two weeks ago - has been the forward's only minutes of the season so far.

"I don’t think we will see Chris Kane," McPake said on Thursday.

"He is away to the pool with the other injured boys. He is close. Had we needed to win this game, potentially we could have pushed him a wee bit more, but we wouldn’t take the risk of inflaming him more.

"We won’t see him this weekend. He shouldn’t be too much longer.

"Andrew Tod didn’t train today, he just did a recovery like the rest of them who played on Wednesday night (in the Fife Cup at St Andrews United). He will be fine, Andrew will be in the squad for Saturday.

"Taylor Sutherland never played because he has played in all the League Cup games, and in all the friendlies as well, so I think it was important to keep Taylor within this group and not risk anything by going up to St Andrews.

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"Taylor trained yesterday and trained today with the first team group. Andrew will come back into that and so will the younger kids like Ewan McLeod, Liam Hoggan, Freddie Rowe and Sam Young."

McPake, who addressed a question of possible new signings by commenting that there "is plenty in there in terms of what we have got, and we need to get the best out of that group", said the game against League One Cove will be vital preparation before next week's Championship opener at Livingston.

When asked if it would provide the opportunity to give more minutes for more players, he replied: "A bit of everything really.

"All throughout the squad, we're working on certain things that we have been trying to introduce. We are trying to do certain things within the game, and get players up to match speed, which is really important.

The Pars fell to their second loss in three Group E matches at Livingston last weekend. (Image: Craig Brown.)

"It has been a disappointing League Cup campaign, we know that. That’s now the third disappointing League Cup campaign that we have had here, but everything leads to the league. We have turned it around before after a disappointing League Cup campaign, so that’s what we need to do again.

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"There are so many teams out there at the minute in the situation where they have had bad results or bad groups, whatever they perceive as a bad League Cup. Ours is the fact that we have had a very poor result at home. It’s in the past now, so we can’t dwell on it, but we know that it was a poor result and poor not to get out the group.

"Certain teams have had poor results and may still get out of the group, it’s just that way it works. That’s not the case for us. We know that we need to be right for the league starting.

"Looking back at the dates, it is five weeks tomorrow since the day we started back and we are about to play our fourth competitive game. It is not a time to panic or worry.

"Of course you want performances, but we shouldn’t panic over those results and get ourselves ready for the league starting. That’s what we have stressed to the players and they recognise that as well - the league is the important one.

"I will back that up by saying that we are disappointed by the League Cup campaign, it is certainly not something we would have hoped for."

He added: "It’s a chance to put in a performance, that’s the big thing at the weekend. Get that, get the boys going, hopefully create chances, score some goals, defend properly and come out of the game feeling good about ourselves going into the league campaign. That’s when it all starts a week on Saturday.

"I’m not saying that it would always have been the case, had we had to win to qualify out of this group then we would solely have focused on the League Cup but unfortunately that’s not the case.

"Now we will use this game as a way of getting ready for a week on Saturday."