No short-term remedy at Dundee, says 'realistic' Pressley

BBC News

3 days ago

Steven Pressley says his Dundee side are moving in the right direction but remain "nowhere near" where they need to be as he prepares for his first league match in charge.The former Hearts skipper endured a turbulent start as defeats by Airdrie and Alloa ended Dundee's hopes of League Cup progression before wins over Bonnyrigg and Montrose brought respite.Pressley says it will take time to and patience to turn around the Dark Blues' fortunes of the Dark Blues, who kick off the new campaign at home to Hibs on Sunday."I think people think that us managers can come in and change things immediately," he said."We can't. It takes time, it takes process, it takes working on the training field relentlessly before you really start to see the signs."I've seen us moving in the direction, but we're nowhere near where we need to be and that will happen only through time on the training ground."I'm realistic on the whole situation. We're not going to get anywhere near where we need to be short term. It's going to take time, it's going to take a real resilience from us and a real work ethic to get there."But every day on the training ground, every game, we hope we can see elements of improvement and certainly come Sunday we hope that we're another step forward from the Montrose game."Pressley praised Hibs for sticking with head coach David Gray last term amid an awful start to his tenure in which the club were bottom of the table in late November."It shows you that when you work towards something, there's always challenges, there's always difficulties, as he experienced," Pressley added."But sometimes if you keep working that way and working towards a process, things can change, and that's what they did."The other thing was that Hibs as a football club deserve credit for sticking by him during that difficult period, and they got their just rewards."He's shown great resilience, great leadership, and they were rewarded with a really strong campaign."