11/01/2025 – DUNDEE UTD (H)

Déjà vu or Groundhog Day, whatever your preference is, there was a definite feeling of “we’ve been here before” at the end of the match against Jim Goodwin’s side on Saturday.

3 times this season we have lost to the Tannadice side in the league, with all 4 goals scored against us coming in the last 10 minutes and all from set pieces. To rub salt into the wound, they also knocked us out the League Cup with a goal from a corner kick.

These matches with Dundee Utd are so tight that the opening goal is likely to win a game, something we touched on last week when we said if we could take our turn and get the decisive breakthrough, we would probably go onto to break this bad run against them.

This was undoubtedly true on Saturday, and in our efforts to do so, we had one effort cleared off the line in a first half we dominated, hit the crossbar in the second half and then missed a one on one chance late on, before United (rather predictably by this point) opened the scoring in the last minute.

It’s these “fine margins” that managers often talk about, but it doesn’t make us feel any better to be honest, especially as we then missed yet another penalty in added on time to deny ourselves even a point, the minimum we should have taken in our opinion.

After the match, Stephen Robinson calculated the loss of points due to penalty misses this season at 12. We consider it a more modest 5 points this season, but we simply can not afford to repeatedly throw away opportunities like this.

In all honesty though, we actually played pretty well in our opinion. Mikael Mandron led the line superbly, and was desperately unlucky to see his second half shot thunder off the underside of the crossbar, an effort that would have signified a deserved goal for the number 9.

He also supplied Toyosi Olusanya with the chance of the game (until the penalty) when his control and through ball allowed Toy to burst clear and bear down on the United goal with 12 minutes remaining, however Sam Walton saved with his foot.

Zach Hemming also had a fine match. He was a spectator for much of it, but in the last 20 minutes produced 2 brilliant stops as Goodwin finally changed tactics to allow his players to attack.

For the confidence of our number 1 (having now ditched the no 77 worn at Parkhead last week) it was great to see, and augurs well for the rest of the season as he attempts to resurecute his Saints career.

In all honesty, ninety nine times out of one hundred, we would win win this match if played again, but we have no time to feel sorry for ourselves as the “business end” of the season is fast approaching, and we are now in the bottom 6 and looking nervously behind us at a packed group ready to take advantage of this poor run of form.

Next Saturday, a welcome break from Premiership football will see us make the journey to Dumfries to take on Queen of the South in the Scottish Cup.

We’ve only made the semi finals of the main cup competition twice since we last won it in 1987, so a good run is overdue. However, we are not in good enough form to take the game lightly, in fact we never should against an underdog.

That said, if we play well, we will win in our opinion. However, with no replays in the Scottish Cup anymore as the SFA ludicrously follows the FA, we could be faced with penalty kicks to decide the tie.

Having missed six penalties since the start of last season, it goes without saying we need to practice a lot this week in case of the dreaded “lottery” of spot kicks. In fact, we should be doing that anyway, given our petty atrocious efforts from 12 yards recently.

I’m sure we will travel south in large numbers as another adventure starts in the Cup, if you can make it, let’s roar the Saints to victory!

COYS!

Dundee Utd Players of the Match:

5 points – Mikael Mandron

3 points – Zach Hemming

1 point – Greg Kilitie

Check our the Player of the Season race here –

PLAYER OF THE SEASON