James McPake knows the focus will be on the history he has with Dundee on Tuesday night, but he will treat it like any other game.
The Dunfermline manager has been consistent in that message whenever a top-of-the-table clash with Edinburgh or a high-profile game against bitter rivals Falkirk is on the horizon.
Now he is applying that same approach as he prepares the Pars for his return to Dens for the first time since he was sacked last year.
He was replaced by Mark McGhee who went on to win once as the club were relegated.
McPake had just won back-to-back matches with Dundee when the news came that he was leaving.
“It’s another game,” McPake told Courier Sport after breaking away from his preparations for the SPFL Trust Trophy quarter-final at Dens Park.
“I work at Dunfermline now and that’s my focus. I’ve no problems with going back to Dundee.
“Obviously there is history there with a lot of the players that I know. A lot of the staff I know as well.
A good test
“But I took Dundee back to Hibs – albeit I was never the Hibernian manager – but it didn’t make any difference, I went back there and wanted to win.
“That will be the case on Tuesday with Dunfermline.”
“They’re a team that are going OK in the league above, so it’s a good test for us. It’s a game we want to be serious about. Like we were against Arbroath.”
That match at Gayfield came in the last round in one of the Pars’ best performances of the season.
Tuesday is shaping up to be a much tougher test – and like the Arbroath game they will be without their four cup-tied loan players.
Defender Rhys Breen missed the weekend’s victory over Edinburgh with illness but there are no fresh concerns ahead of Dundee.
“Everybody has come through the weekend OK,” said McPake.
“The obvious ones are the loan players that can’t play. It’s a chance to give people that maybe need minutes or ones that haven’t been playing a game.
“We’re in good shape, we’re going up there with a decent enough squad.
Contract talks
Meanwhile negotiations are going on “in the background” with some of the Pars’ out-of-contract players.
Pars chief executive David Cook and the club’s sporting director Thomas Meggle have had “initial conversations” with players, the Dunfermline manager revealed.
“What we don’t want to do is have a huge turnover every transfer window,” added McPake.
“The players have been excellent for us and the process here is very good, in terms of David and Thomas.
“They deal with the agents and the representatives of the payers, I have conversations with the players as well.
“They’ve all been great and hopefully we can get a few of them done.”
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