The Bipolar Years (Part 7: 2014-2015 'Mon the Balance Sheet)

I'll be honest. There are large swathes of this season that I have no recollection of whatsoever. That's unusual since I normally have a good memory of these things when I get going. It's actually like I have mentally blocked it out. I just watched a game against Aberdeen that we lost 2-0 at home in and honestly cannot remember being at it, even though after their second goal I can pick myself out. There is a 3-2 win against Ross County up there that I also can't remember although watching it I just LOL'd at the fact they had Lewis Toshney and Paul Quinn as centre halves. There's no point bullshitting everyone and writing some sort of blow-by-blow account of this season so I'll stick to the bit's I actually DO remember; be that particular games, performances or general feelings of the season which proved to be the pivotal point of the decade for United. If you want to torture yourself, go on the ever-excellent Arab Archive since most of the games this season have got video highlights. Let's face it, there's a reason why I've subconsciously blocked out this season.

So the season began with me still a bit raw from the fallout of the season before with my own personal problems both at work and at home only starting to heal after a mixture of talking things out, apologies and the odd shouting match (there is a lot to be said for this to clear the air) and I was quite tentative when I bought my season ticket having seen the team significantly weakened by the sales of prize assets Ryan Gauld to Sporting Lisbon in a deal with masses of add-ons (did any of these actually benefit the club?) as well as a big fee and Andy Robertson to Hull City for an even bigger fee. I took the young lad to see the pre-season game against Forfar which was significant because it was Robertson's last game for United and the young lad's first United match. He is happy to be able to say to his pals that he seen Robertson in the flesh. This friendly was also nice because Jordan Moore scored a late equaliser for Utd, set up by Robertson (of course) and was jumped on by pretty much the entire team in celebration for the brave way Moore had come back from horrendous issues with skin cancer. Although his playing career was ended prematurely, the fact the lad was able to get back on the pitch at all was a testament to his character and the club for supporting him. The sale of these two players was a massive blow since Robertson and Gauld were once in a generation talents and it was a sad sign of modern football that we didn't get the benefit of 3-4 years of these players in tangerine before selling them on in the way that we did with players like Duncan Ferguson, Kevin Gallacher, Billy McKinlay and David Goodwillie. The consolation for me and others was that the sale of these two would surely clear the majority of the debt which the club had been running with for about 10 years (a fact which Stephen Thompson would remind us of in the press on a regular basis) and would mean that firstly the clubs existence would be safe for number of years with crippling interest payments hopefully significantly decreased and secondly, that we'd be under less pressure to sell our remaining talents such as Armstrong, GMS, Souttar and Ciftci. 

At least that's what I was hoping because what I do remember is that an awful lot of Utd supporters at this time seemed to obsess about the transfer value of our players and excitedly post on forums and social media whenever this club or that club was in for one of our players for X million and how this bid would knock Y% off of the debt. I don't want to have a go at our own supporters but I have to question the reason why some people actually watch football. I fully accept that people worry about the club's finances and worry about the possibility of the club going into administration or liquidation and United fans have perhaps been closer to these issues more than most due to Dundee's two administrations and of course the old Glasgow Rangers implosion which was United's fault (apparently). However, personally I go to watch football to cheer on a United team with all of it's best players on the park for as long as realistically possible so we are competitive. But what was starting to happen here was some punters appeared to be more interested in cheering on a balance sheet and the clearing of a debt in record time through the sale of as many of our best players as possible with no thought as to what quality of team would be left behind at the end of this. The even more naive also seemed to think that the entire 5 million+ we received for Gauld and Robertson would be reinvested in the squad. Bizarre behaviour, which by February gave these people the biggest wake-up call you'll ever get. What is worrying is that some people haven't learned their lesson judging by the "I hope we get this/that for Benji/Shankland in January," comments I have seen over the past few weeks as if the collapse of 2015-2016 followed by four years of utter shite we experienced from ripping the arse out of our team without any strategy to move on from it never happened. There's a difference between selling a player every so often to ensure the club remains stable and a complete firesale. Stay up first. Plan for the future second. Then accept a bid in the summer if it suits the club third FFS.

The Aberdeen game at Pittodrie was a pleasant surprise for a number of reasons. They had our number in 2013-14 and were able to overcome our technical superiority with power, grit and determination. And this was with Gauld and Robertson.  Therefore going in with what was on paper, a weaker squad was a worry. I didn't really know anything about any of our signings. Two central defenders were signed: Jarek Fojut from a team in Poland and Callum Morris from Dunfermline, a left back called Connor Townsend was brought in on loan as part of the Robertson deal, a Dutch-Russian (???) striker called Mario Bilate came from Holland although his hamstrings got detained at customs and three young players: Charlie Telfer and Blair Spittal came from SEVCO and Queens Park as well as a Polish goalkeeper (if you could call him that) called Mihael Szromnik was recruited (from YouTube no doubt). These young lads were all coming in for transfer fees as well. Brain Graham went out on loan to St Johnstone after taking the huff for not starting against Aberdeen despite an impressive pre-season. United supporters weren't fussed given the way Graham had allegedly made a tit of himself in Liquid after the Scottish Cup Final. Anyway, a massive United support were treated to one of the best performances I saw in the decade as United struck the right balance between skill and solidity in a 3-0 win. Aberdeen never laid a glove on us all day. The new centre halves were no-nonsense, good in the air and really impressive in a similar vein to Wilkie and Dods. The new left back, whilst not a direct replacement for Robertson looked steady and very competent whilst the forward areas slipped right back into the class of last season. Chris Erskine also came on as a sub and looked like a new player after his difficulties last season whilst the new striker Bilate looked rapid for a big man. It really appeared that the recruitment had been spot-on with no hangover from the Scottish Cup Final disappointment of last season. To think I had to be coaxed up to this game too by a mate. Fantastic.

The first home game against Motherwell took place at the end of a baking hot day which naturally for me meant a pub crawl since it was still the holidays. United never hit the same heights in this match as up at Aberdeen. Motherwell were more pragmatic than in the previous season and United appeared to be forcing it a bit too much although we still dominated the game. This was not helped by the new Tannadice pitch which appeared to have something seriously wrong with it since it looked like the players were running on a sponge and whenever anyone made a slide tackle or caught their studs in the pitch a chunk of the turf appeared to lift up or tear. However, we kept plugging away until eventually Mario Bilate scored a screamer after selling their defender a dummy (or miscontrolled the ball fooling the defender depending on your point of view). Anyway, top of the league with no goals conceded and looking a real threat. Optimism abounded. Celtic next at Parkhead. The record had to go this time surely...

Cue another horsewhipping of course. Shambolic defending at set pieces and worryingly, United players not tracking their men all over the park, particularly at Celtic's third goal where the United attacking '3' of Dow, Armstrong and GMS, much praised in the first two games, just stood and watched a Celtic player make a run from deep in midfield to firstly dispossess Paul Paton then score. This was brutally highlighted by Sky using an overhead camera. One of our players actually had their hands on their hips. Not good. Although we still created chances in this game a failure to do the ugly stuff would gradually become more and more of a feature of United under Jackie McNamara this season and beyond. The frustrating thing about this was that Celtic had a new manager who was clearly pretty hopeless and would go on to drop silly points throughout the season and despite having Virgil Van Dijk in their team, were no great shakes.

We thankfully then recovered from this setback for the next month and bar one draw, picked up maximum points even beating St Johnstone 2-0 with Tommy Wright playing a 9-0-1 formation and United scoring a bizarre goal which actually stemmed from us making a mistake with a bad passback which for the first time in the game drew St Johnstone off of their 18 yard line creating space for us to clear up the park and score. Before this game was the small matter of a double header against Dundee firstly in the league at Dens followed by the League Cup at Tannadice midweek. The Fun had actually got their act together under Pep Hartley and thanks to their new American owners (who for the first time that I can remember in the long history of the Dee, were not crooks, shysters, war criminals or monorail salesmen) had signed some decent players, particularly Scott Bain, James McPake (LOL), Greg Stewart and Kevin Thomson. Thankfully, United put the Funsters back in their box at Dens with a Super Mario penalty and a sssshhhhhhhh! (he would also lamp one Funster pitch invader in the cup game then another in Liquid a few weeks later), a Ryan Dow Messi style effort which set off the Derry fire alarm and two set piece goals. The midweek cup game was a lot closer with Dundee missing a penalty and dominating early on before a red card changed the game in our favour although we mostly huffed and puffed before a last minute, bedlam-inducing header from big Fojut won it for us. This game also gave me the second sight of Blair Spittal (seen him at the Forfar friendly) who had been talked up by Jackie as a real star. Meh. No pace, no tricks, no anything really. Maybe he'd get better as time went on.

Or maybe he wouldn't.

October started with us near top of the league and on tv for a Friday night away game against Killie. This was to be the start of a run. A run of United getting beat every time we were on tv on a Friday night that is. Incredibly this 'run' didn't actually end until we beat Hibs in the Championship in 2016 and even then we'd suffer numerous defeats for another few years after this until it reached the point where Robbie Neilson was actually asked a question about it at a presser when he was manager! What was worse was that in 2014-15, every time we had a chance of going top between this point and Christmas, they'd put us on tv and we'd fuck up royally. Tope Obedeyi running us ragged and Mark Connolly scoring a cracking header (smashing Fojut out of the way) only rubs further salt in the wound looking back on this match. We then beat Partick 1-0 in a real struggle where we played virtually no football, instead Fojut was just aimlessly punting long balls up to Nads and we appeared to run out of steam after half time. I remember at the time starting to question the fitness levels of the squad and rumours were starting to surface about the players being unhappy with the quality and frequency of training. Jackie was starting to shuffle the pack on a weekly basis and in several games either Armstrong, Dow or GMS (or all three even) were being left out for weeks on end. It's mental to think that after we beat St Mirren 3-0 at Tannadice we went top of the league again at the start of November and people (like me) were moaning about how shite we had played in the first half with the only source of interest for most Arabs in the Eddie Thompson stand being the carnage going on in the hospitality upstairs as a choir of extremely well-oiled punters from East Football, led by Huntedbyafreak were declaring their admiration for Paul Paton who had earlier banjoed Lukas Zaluska on a night out in Glasgow before turning it on in the second half to rattle in three goals. Think 'Ivan Golac's magic' and you'll be taken back to this game.

Another tv horror show away to Motherwell followed (honestly we could have actually pulled away into a decent lead at the top of the league if it wasn't for fucking Friday night tv games and you'd have been forgiven for thinking you were watching two different teams at this time, the one on the tv and the one off it). A 3-1 win against Killie which I can't remember was followed by a pissed-up away day to Motherwell in the Scottish Cup which for some unknown reason was again starting in November (matching old school black and white hat and scarf combos were the order of the day for this one). What followed in this game, particularly in the second half will explain why I appear to have been moaning like fuck through most of this blog so far despite mentioning how this United team were at the top of the league. It's not because I'm am spoiled or entitled, honestly. It's the frustration of knowing that we can play like we did here, and didn't do it because I'll tell you what if we played like this most weeks that season, this blog would be speaking about a title winning season, I fucking shit you not. United were simply sensational and it should have been double figures, carving open a decent Motherwell team at will, showing determination all over the park. It is probably the best performance I have seen post 2010 and was a masterclass in passing and linking up married with players driving at opponents with and without the ball. Football has became very static and less of a running game in recent years due to poor players and managers trying to replicate the tiki-taka Spanish style, ending up with a slow-paced pass, pass, pass, go-nowhere game which is as turgid as it sounds. This was the complete opposite of that and United players appeared to be on some sort of mass cavalry charge where every pass was forwards and at pace, usually involving Stuart Armstrong. Fucking magic. A couple of other notable takes from this game were firstly, we should have been more than one goal down at half time, secondly, a disinterested GMS getting hooked early in the second half with Aidan Connolly replacing him and having a great game and thirdly, the restoration of John Souttar to the team, scoring our equaliser no less. Our spectacular return to passing football and Souttar's return to the defence were not coincidental. It's easy to forget how many of our goals during the 4-0 run of the previous season came from moves started by Souttar playing out from the back whereas most of this season we appeared to have traded our ability to play out from the back for a more traditional clear-your-lines into row z pairing of Morris and Fojut (both of whom were injured here I think).  I said in the car after the game a balance needed to be struck because Souttar was too good a player to be sitting in the stand and surely to fuck someone could just work with the laddie on the defects in his game (heading, concentration and a general need to toughen up a bit). Listening to the radio after, Tam Cowan said United's second half performance was the best he'd ever seen from any team at Fir Park, considering how good we were the season before against them (and McCall said similar) it really spoke volumes for the potential of United at this time.

The win against Ross County and the defeat against Aberdeen which I mentioned at the start of this blog followed (judging by the videos we were decent against County before two late lapses but were shite against Aberdeen) and saw McNamara experiment with Souttar and Fojut at the back which sounded like a good mix of brains and brawn but was abandoned at half time against Aberdeen due to Souttar getting ragdolled by Adam Rooney. Oh well. However, what followed next was a home game against Celtic that I most certainly DO remember since we were magnificent showing skill and character in abundance to win 2-1. There was no fluke about this, we went toe-to-toe with them and came out on top, even if we rode our luck at times. No GMS or Dow either, Blair Spittal and Chris Erskine (who had emerged as a top performer by this stage) played very well but the star men were Nadir Ciftci and Stuart Armstrong who by now was the best player in Scotland by a considerable distance (but still hadn't been capped of course). Both scored here and Nads set up for the second goal was just sheer class and impudence. Callum Butcher had also been converted from a centre half into a central midfielder and had given us a real physical presence that we had lacked previously because of his size and his liking for a tackle. He was also half decent with the ball at his feet and could drive at teams. A bit different from the anonymous Callum Butcher this season unfortunately.

We then of course blew another chance to go top of the league against St Johnstone away on Boxing Day although this was 100% the fault of the manager and not the players who were on top and looking like they could grind out a 1-0 win. Jackie McNamara, for reasons known only to him decided to force Callum Morris to play on when he was clearly completely fucked with a thigh injury from about 5 minutes into the second half. It wasn't even as if we had no-one to replace him. In fact by my reckoning there were three possible subs/changes he could have made which could have kept the shape of the team: the obvious one was to put Mark Wilson on at right back and move Sean Dillon into centre half. However, Jackie was apparently still in the huff with Wilson for going on the drink on the Sunday night with Paton before the infamous 'Zaluska rammy' two months before when Wilson was scheduled to play for the u20s the next day. Ok then, he could have brought young Euan Spark on at right back and put Dillon at centre half. No? Then what about bringing Charlie Telfer on in central midfield and pulling Butcher back to centre half? Nae chance. What our managerial maestro did instead was allow Morris to limp around the pitch clearly in agony offering nothing whatsoever to stem the tide which by now had turned in St Johnstone's favour due to us effectively playing with 10 men. He waited until they had scored two goals unchallenged to finally take him off for GMS with two minutes to go. Jackie claimed in the press that Morris kept insisting he was ok to carry on. If that's what he saw it was a fucking trip to Barnard Castle that was needed for Jackie. Morris was never the same player again for United (or any club in fact). I know a physio who did a bit of freelance work for Aberdeen (who Morris joined after leaving us) who said that within a few minutes of examining Callum, found a small tear in his thigh muscle which had never been properly diagnosed or treated by United. This was the injury from the St Johnstone game about 20 months before which he had been carrying. Pretty shocking ineptitude all round since Morris was initially a decent player for us with good potential but never developed from this point onwards.

This injury meant Morris would not be fit for the New Years Day Derby and Keith Watson was played at centre half for the first time that I can recall. Of course what followed is the stuff of legend as United dismantled the Fun and as Charlie Telfer swept in number six you'd have been forgiven for thinking maybe this was our year as Rado had predicted when he said that a treble was on. Treble voddys anyway for me in the Taxi Clubby before the game and Frews after it (which I left my hat in of course). Similar to the other 6-2 game, it wasn't actually that one-sided and the hammering was more a result of how clinical United were, with GMS in particular re-emerging and having a field day. Dundee's third choice keeper helped us along that day and invented the phrase 'pure Schenk' to symbolize whenever you are having a 'mare. There's no point describing this one in any great detail since it will be etched on most Arabs minds anyway I am sure. A draw away to Partick Thistle was followed by a 3-2 win away to Hamilton (changed days) who surprisingly were right up near the top of the league. I say surprisingly but when you look at their line up it reads like a who's who of really decent players who would go on to do well all over Scotland or down south. A peach of a Sean Dillon header won it for us in the end. Dillon was having one of his best spells as United player during this period as it happens. We were on the tv a lot because we were around the top of the table and therefore were big box-office and as long as it wasn't on a Friday night we were ok. What was also good about the 6-2 derby was the young lad was now pestering me to go to see games and was at an age (now 7) where he could largely sit and watch the match rather than just running about having a carry-on or asking me to go home because it was boring or cold. Personally, I can't understand why folk take their bairns when they are younger than this, no doubt shelling out a small fortune for something that they are too young to really appreciate. Each to their own though. His first game was a 3-1 win over Motherwell which Charlie Telfer was very impressive in, scoring and getting the man-of-the-match award. He loved it and it really appeared he was about to witness the start of fantastic era for United...

My selfish desire for a boys day out on the drink meant he didn't get taken to the League Cup Semi against the Sheep though. This was the defining point of our football season. Walking out on cloud 9 having FINALLY shown real character to come back from a goal down and a first half mostly spent camped in our own box I honestly thought we were on the brink of something big and personally felt like the frustrations and demons from the Scottish Cup Final were roared out at the end of this match. This team appeared to have it all; pace, skill and now, fight and depth . The obvious triple threat of Armstrong, GMS and Ciftci were now in some games being supported and in others even being upstaged by by the likes of Telfer, Erskine, Connolly and in this game, Ryan Dow who it has to be said came on as a sub and almost single handedly dragged us back into this game with his pace and direct running. Into the final of one cup, the other about to start in a week and still up near the top of the league at the end of January. The club had withered the loss of Robertson and Gauld, had done a deal to buy the remaining debt from the bank which meant what was left (£3 million) had been bought by a consortium of United fans and turned into 'soft' loans with much lower interest payments and a longer repayment timescale which Stephen Thompson said meant that the club no longer was under any pressure to sell our best players. We'd even brought in a couple of new players prior to the semi final; Henri Anier who had been decent for Motherwell a few years before and was an Estonian international striker. This on paper seemed useful because we had no out-and-out striker for most of the season. Mario Bilate had been out injured since about September and the rumour was his hamstrings were fucked. We also signed Ryan McGowan who was a really exciting signing, he'd been an excellent player for Hearts, was an Australian internationalist and could play centre half (our defence was still leaking too many goals) and also right back where he'd scored a lot of goals from including in the 5-1 Scottish Cup Final win over Hibs. 

However, in amongst this United had decided to loan Keith Watson out to Hibs in the Championship. The impact of this transfer would be somewhat lost in the next few weeks and months but history will show that this decision was almost as bad as the ones which followed it. Keith was a limited player (not because of a lack of  ability but instead because of the toll his horrendous knee injuries had taken on him) but he wore his heart on his sleeve, had real resilience and was a proper club man who had been through the entire Levein/Houston era and knew the standards of the club. By all accounts he was also an extremely popular figure in the dressing room. If a player like this, a stalwart, could be so easily and cheaply discarded, which player could be next? It also put pressure on the boy who came in to replace him to show he was a significant upgrade. On paper he was. But football isn't played on paper and the wisdom of this decision (and the signing of Anier who was rank rotten on his debut) should have set alarm bells ringing about the manager's thinking. Especially given the next decision he was about to play a part in. The club just needed one last push. One last push and the debt would be cleared, oops I mean, one last push and we'd be winning trophies.

BT Sport's Six landmark moments in the last decade of Scottish football:

Mark Renton says in Trainspotting: "But the good times couldn't last forever. Something died in Sick Boy that day and never returned." Well something died in our support that day that five years later, has still never returned. Our Vietnam. Our JFK. Innocence lost. What was going to happen next?

The balance sheet was looking good at least. Wasn't it???

'Mon the balance sheet!

Dundee United FC: The Banter Years

Who remembers Billy Dodds getting sold and the downward spiral it sent that team into? We went from beating Celtic and sitting 3rd in the league until Christmas to narrowly escaping the relegation places as a result of our first half of the season form and losing a very winnable cup semi-final against the worst Aberdeen team of all time. It exposed the team for what it was: one extremely talented player (Dodds), a couple of not bad ones (Telesnikov and Siggi Jonsson) and the remainder a team of journeymen including, one or two who weren't really up to much at all (Mathie, McQuillan) and a group of young players who although decent, were not up to the standard of previous years despite being talked up by the club as being at a level well beyond their abilities (Thompson, Easton, Paterson, Davidson, Gallacher, McCracken, McConologue, Partridge, Worrall, Venetis). The thing is, most teams, even the successful ones (especially at the level United operate at) are actually like this. Having 11 superstars in your line up is reserved only for the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man City, Liverpool and Bonetti-era Dundee and therefore, those one or two real talents in your team become the glue that holds the side together. Selling mid-season is a MASSIVE risk due to the difficulty in recruiting replacements and having to pay top-dollar to do so. This sale completely demoralised the whole club and the support and  despite the well-intentioned and likeable Eddie Thompson throwing ridiculous sums of money at trying to help the club recover, probably took until Craig Levein arrived seven years later for us to get any sort of stability and pride back.

Looking back it's mental to think how similar the situation with Armstrong and GMS was to the Dodds sale and yet Stephen Thompson still chose to sanction the sales of our two best players to our main rivals in both the league and League Cup (and soon in the Scottish Cup too). Why????? To clear a bit more of the debt which had come down from £6 million to £3 million already thanks to the £5.75 million we were to receive from the sales of Robertson and Gauld (I don't understand how that works either, after Queens Park got around £250,000, pretty sure that means that agents and the players themselves got £2.5 million worth of that in their cuts FFS). After work I spent about 6 hours staring at screens with my PC, phone and tablet all being refreshed on 30 second intervals, firstly trying to see the rumours that it was going to happen, then reading the stories in disbelief when it did happen, then being fed the bullshit rumours of who we were going to sign to 'replace' the 'Tim Two'. Allegations that both GMS and Armstrong had demanded to leave were all over social media (GMS was away on a pre-contract and had looked in the huff for about two months bar the derby on new years day so it could be true. Armstrong has since publicly denied this. He's bright lad who clearly knows his own worth but never struck me as arrogant or demanding). As usual Scott Allan was the name trotted out by club-friendly journalists as if this was somehow going to appease the  support (replacing two rats with an even bigger rat, no thanks). Finally what we got was Paul Dixon back (seemed good on paper but strange given that we had a very good left back already, albeit on loan although he had fallen out of favour and the rumour was he'd fallen out with the manager. It was a loss given that Townsend now plays in the English Premiership) and a laddie from Kilmarnock called Robbie Muirhead that nobody had heard of but who we shelled out a lot of money for at the last minute. He had a braw YouTube clip of a goal he scored for Scotland's under 19s though which was clearly all the scouting that was needed for the decision to be made to sign him. Neither was a direct replacement given that Muirhead was a striker. 

I am convinced that by the end of this night I had actually made my already crap eyesight even worse and the next time I went to the opticians my prescription had deteriorated quite significantly due to staring at screens for hours wondering what the fuck was going through Thompson's head. What then made it even worse was Jackie McNamara coming out and saying that we had players to replace the departing pair and that Connolly, Telfer and Spittal were ready to replace them. Now granted, all three had had some decent games or bits of games but Telfer was the only one who appeared to be able to take a game by the scruff of the neck in the way Armstrong and GMS had done. However, he was still wildly inconsistent and the three of them barely even had 30 first team games between them. On the one hand you could say fair play for McNamara loyally toeing the party line and that he couldn't exactly come out and publicly slate his boss for selling his best players from under him. However, when McNamara backed these players to comfortably replace the ones who had gone you got a sense that he really believed that or more accurately, that he arrogantly believed that he had some sort of managerial Midas touch and that the success we had been having was down to him rather than the players at his disposal. This is where I start to get really angry about things.

Now there is no doubt that Jackie McNamara was doing SOMETHING right since the quality of football could at times be breathtaking and the results were as good as I had seen in my time as a United fan. The way he was sending the players out in a very fluid, attacking system allowed the Gauld's, Armstrong's, Souttar's and GMS's etc. to express themselves in a way that Peter Houston did not appear to given his dogged use of either 4-4-2 or latterly, the much more turgid 4-5-1. However, it's easy to forget that Jackie inherited these players and of his own buys, only Ciftci, Robertson and Fojut could be described as unqualified successes. When United lined up against Stranraer in the Scottish Cup the week after this clusterfuck, it was very much Jackie's team with only now Ryan Dow, John Rankin, John Souttar (who was by now overweight and looking increasingly lazy and disinterested) and Rado (who was flogging a goal a game) left from 2013. The onus was now on HIM to deliver on his promise that these players could replace the ones who had left. However, we were incapable of keeping clean sheets even before the ill-fated transfer window which was where his biggest problem lay as a manager. When you also took away our creative threat as well, he was about to be found out big-style.

"Spaghetti Arms"

A month of mediocrity where the team looked devoid of ideas is not even worth mentioning except for Rado getting dropped for the St Johnstone game and being replaced by 'Spaghetti Arms Szromnik' who flogged both goals. Given that Rado was making noises about leaving at the end of the season, it was another resounding scouting success. We then faced the quadruple header against Celtic which we all knew would highlight the folly of rolling over for them at the sight of their sweaty cheque book. We gave it a right good go in the first Scottish Cup game, taking the lead, causing them problems with Connolly, Ciftci and Dow up front in a more pragmatic 4-3-3 system which I thought got the balance spot-on between being a bit more solid given the opposition and still retaining decent attacking threat. We even survived a second half onslaught after getting two men sent off with a quality barney where Butcher and Ciftci got tore into Scott Brown and Van Dijk then for some reason the referee sent off Paul Paton who had nothing to do with the incident which was then overturned on appeal. John Rankin was superb at marshalling United players to repel wave after wave of Celtic attacks. My mates and I left the game in a more positive mood than expected with some hope at least that if we could show the same spirit in the League Cup Final then we'd have a punchers chance especially seeing Scott Brown pictured pished in the week running up to the game. 

I had a debate with my pals on the bus after the cup final about the team selection. My mates felt the team Jackie put out was correct for the game given our lack of creativity and Ciftci's suspension. I felt we were far too defensive and basically were sacrificing our attacking intent in order to avoid losing goals. For those who cant remember we, lined up: 

Rado

Dillon

Morris

Fojut

Dixon

McGowan

Butcher

Paton

Rankin

Dow

Bilate

I'd have left one of Dillon or McGowan out and played another attacker like Erskine or Connolly and felt we had relegated ourselves to the level of 'diddy' clubs accepting we were going to get a doing if we attempted to open up. It's weird because the season before against St Johnstone I'd have played another more defensive player to match them physically whereas this time  just felt we needed to try and have a bit more of a go. As it turned out we huffed and puffed and created very little but were still in the game until Dillon's red card in the second half (he shouldn't have been on by this point after his lengthy injury in the first half which probably cost us the first goal). The referee did us no favours since Van Dijk should have been sent off for the challenge on Dillon and Brown should have been sent off for a last man challenge on Dow. Trudging out of Hampden thinking you are glad you never got a hiding suggests your club is not in a good place though. Especially, given that if we'd had the team that played in the semi final we'd probably have won the game. 

I never bothered going to the replay or the league game because I knew what was going to happen as we became more demoralised in each match and to be honest our season ended at Hampden. Bar a brief respite against Celtic for 45 minutes and then a win against Aberdeen where we actually looked half-decent and Robbie Muirhead scored a screamer it was just one low point after another after that with the lowest point coming against Dundee comfortably beating us at Dens and a game away at Inverness where we surrendered so meekly that the Fed put a post on their Facebook page saying, 'No leadership on the park or in the dugout'. The pack was getting shuffled week after week and you could see certain players looked less interested with each passing week (Fojut, Rado, Ciftci) whilst the younger ones were struggling having to try and perform each week and physically were all far too easily bullied. Players were also looking increasingly unfit. However, given that we were top six and under no threat of relegation, in my opinion the manager should have been sacked prior to the final game of the season at home to Dundee. In a way, it is unfortunate that we won this game comfortably (and played well) and as unthinkable as it is that I would ever say such a thing I suspect other United supporters will understand me saying it. It just looked like a fresh start was needed for the club to try and rebuild the team from scratch with new ideas (not Mixu) rather than McNamara trying to recreate past glories when it was clear that he looked unable to recruit the players to do so. At an Arabtrust agm meeting I stated my concern that we would get relegated next season if we maintained this form and the current managerial setup (not Mixu). The trust between the manager and the fans had also evaporated due to the public revelations about Jackie's contract which included a cut of transfers for players he had signed (I think). I have no idea how these things work and felt it was poor stuff that this information was made public, largely, it appeared, to get the fans off of the Chairman's back. Of course some interpreted this as an incentive to develop good players whereas others interpreted it as a vested interest to line their own pockets. Christ knows if it was a good idea or not. I do know (from the same Arabtrust agm) that it was consistent with the clubs policy which was outlined in a club brochure which stated on the first page: 

"Dundee United are a selling club."

Aye, because that's what I say if someone asks me why I became a United supporter; I support United because they are a selling club.

At least we still had an asset in Nadir Ciftci...

'Mon the balance sheet!