Kenny plays down cup win

If there were any lingering doubts regarding Stephen Kenny's popularity on Foyleside in the wake of his departure for Scotland at the end of November they can probably be safely discarded in the wake of Dunfermline's cup defeat of Rangers on Sunday.

Less committed Derry fans may well now view the loss of Kenny as having been entirely worth it and the victory has certainly earned plenty of headlines for the Dubliner in the Scottish media. Having had to explain to journalists immediately after the game, however, that he did not view the win as even ranking in the top 10 of his achievements as a manager Kenny is clearly a little embarrassed by the scale of all the fuss.

His attention has shifted back to the more mundane but ultimately more important business of Premier League survival with local rivals Falkirk due to provide the opposition this weekend. They, he says with a hint of bemusement, would be a scalp that matters around the club's heartland on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

"The people here are great," he says. "There isn't the harshness about them that you can sometimes get with people who live in bigger cities. I mean, we're bottom of the league but the players wouldn't get stick about it. People would still be very encouraging, whenever you talk to people in the street they're nice to you, they genuinely want you to do well and they seem to accept it if things aren't going too well.

"The problem is," he adds with a laugh, "that a lot of that tends to go out the window when Falkirk are involved." The club has already lost two such derby games this season with Anthony Stokes scoring all three Falkirk goals when the two sides last met at the start of November. Now Kenny, who moved out of a hotel and into a house only last weekend, is hoping that the win over Rangers will spark the sort of league revival that can carry them to the dizzy heights of 11th place in the Premier League table.

"We could probably do with strengthening in one of two areas," he states rather diplomatically, "but the real problem here is the number of injuries. We had 11 laid up when I arrived and it hasn't improved a great deal since then although the more immediate problem is that we'll have three of the side that won on Sunday suspended next weekend, including two of the goalscorers."

Kenny plays down the extent of his interest in a variety of players here with whom he has been linked but concedes that he would like to land under- 21 international Stephen Ward.

Bohemians, indeed, have turned down four offers from Dunfermline, the most recent worth up to €200,000 for the left-sided attacking player who was yesterday on trial at Wolves.

Kenny's only addition to the squad has been Jim O'Brien, a Glasgow-born teenager who has opted to play for Ireland and who shone against Rangers having only arrived at the club on loan from Celtic on Friday afternoon.

"He was the top scorer this season with Celtic's reserves but out wide is his natural position," he says. "He has pace, lots of skill and is a very accurate crosser of the ball. I won't saddle him with an Aiden McGeady comparison but he certainly has that sort of potential.

"Adding another couple of new faces would help," he says, but the most important thing is that the players already at East End Park are fit and available for what remains of the campaign. "We have a fair bit of ground to make up on the likes of St Mirren and Inverness but the top-half, bottom-half split will work in our favour because we have a few of the clubs near the bottom of the table to play over the next few weeks after which we have them all over again.

"Talk is cheap, you can say anything. But the reality is that we're nine points behind and people more or less have us relegated but that's not the way I see it. I'd look on it that if we can turn ourselves around and stay up then this club can go from strength to strength. That's the aim."

If they pull it off then the real significance of Sunday's victory over Rangers which, he hopes, has restored some belief to a slightly battered group of players, will be apparent at the end of the season.

The locals, though, will be anxious that any late run of league form can be traced back to a big win over Falkirk. And that, in Stephen Kenny's new neck of the woods, is what they call real pressure.