James McPake has hailed as ‘priceless’ his relationship with Thomas Meggle at Dunfermline Athletic.
The Pars boss has revealed the club’s German sporting director has ‘opened his eyes’ to some aspects of management over the course of their 18 months working together.
But he has stressed that Meggle has never once overstepped the mark and tried to influence his team selections.
Meggle and Nick Teller, a fellow board member and another of Dunfermline’s consortium owners at DAFC Fussball GmBH, were over in Scotland to visit the club last week.
McPake held lengthy discussions with the pair on Thursday ahead of the 2-1 defeat to Partick Thistle, which Teller watched from the main stand.
And the Fifers manager has explained the bonus of being able to tap into Meggle’s wealth of experience from his time as a player, assistant, head coach and sporting director with German side St Pauli.
McPake said: “It is brilliant to meet up with them, I genuinely mean that.
“Unless they have other business commitments I’d say [they’re here] probably every six weeks.
McPake: ‘Outside influence is brilliant’
“But I speak to Thomas most Mondays just to go over the game, which is great.
“Normally on Friday we have a video call: ‘What’s the team on Saturday, what are we looking for in the game?’.
“Thomas will say this himself, he has never once said, ‘you should play him, you should do this, do that’.
“From my point of view it’s priceless for me and Dave [Mackay, assistant] to have someone who has experienced a very high level of football in a foreign country. I have never had that.
“I have worked with Gordon Strachan [at Dundee], who was fantastic in terms of his career and the level that he had worked at. He had played international football.
“But Thomas has managed, played, coached and been sporting director at a German club.
“So, getting that outside influence for me and Dave is brilliant because it is a completely different game. It has opened our eyes up to certain different things.
“We believe we are better for it.
“It was a case of, ‘if you are comfortable, we would like to have these meetings’.
‘His career speaks for itself’
“Of course, we jumped at it because we wanted to ask questions.”
Whilst McPake and Mackay relish the sounding board, the Dunfermline boss is content they have free rein to make their own decisions.
McPake added: “Thomas watches every game, as do all the board members and Thomas is the footballing person on that.
“His career speaks for itself so he gives us his input.
“But the one thing I’ll stress, and he will stress it himself, is that he gives us his feedback – and then it’s up to us.”
