Right back to where we were after we were right back to where we started from.
Why were we ever worried again? 75 points, third highest points total in the Championship era, seven wins, two draws and only one defeat from our final ten games and the most enjoyable ending to a season since 2010. It now all looks like the skoosh that people predicted months before. Maybe January to mid-March was typical Championship fare with us grinding out results with the odd wobble in there. Thing is though, when United wobble they really fucking wobble. Or maybe the support wobble? Who knows.
If we start at the point where the last blog finished which was after the Raith away game where we lost an early goal, worked our way back into the game, equalized then had most of the ball, without creating much, made subbies which weakened us (unlike them) then lost to a goal which the boy will never score again in his life the questions about Goodwin's ability to win 'big' games were very prominent in people's minds. They were not dispelled by an unconvincing win the following week over Queens Park. The young lad was playing in a cup game in Fife that morning (won 3-1) so was a bit late getting in only to be greeted by David Wotherspoon going down injured (not to be seen again until late in the season) and us losing the first goal yet again (a bad habit which we had gotten into). To be fair, we turned it around by half-time and the response was good (Moult's free kick was a cracker but his celebration marked the start of United players seeming to get it up their own support when they scored, Middleton done the same. It was a trend that would carry on for the rest of the season for certain players. Just enjoy it lads ffs. When I was a kid my dad said to me if I score I should always get the hands up and punch the air with a big smile, Kenny Dalglish style. Watch Kai Fotheringham when he scores, that's how you celebrate goals) but it really had to be given that Queens Park were a pretty poor side.
The midweek game against Airdrie though was where the panic button was well and truly pressed. The Queens Park game was the start of a busy sequence of games with two games a week for the next three weeks. When it came to the first midweek game Jim Goodwin decided to mix up his selection by changing shape to a 4-3-3 and bringing in Archie Meekison and Chris Mochrie to midfield to play either side of Craig Sibbald with Alex Grieve and Glen Middleton playing either side of Tony Watt. On paper, I could sort of see what he was trying to do. He'd been criticised for paying Airdrie too much respect in the previous two meetings; "We're Dundee United. Airdrie should be worrying about our footballers, not the other way round!" was a common cry. Mochrie and Meekison were fresh and for years had been lauded as tidy footballers, five-a-side players etc. so in this case the team selection had a, "I'll show you mine, you show me yours," look about it as if to say to Airdrie we'll put all our technical players on the park the same time as you do and we'll see who's best. Oh dear. For starters McCabe sussed this very quickly and played himself. Shitting himself that McCabe would run the game, Goodwin then appeared to instruct Tony Watt to drop deep and effectively mark McCabe when their centre halves had the ball, allowing them the time and space to do whatever they wanted and leaving us with no main striker. The idea that this was going to be some sort of feast of passing football was guff since all their defenders did was knock the ball long either to get in behind us (they kept trying to draw us out) or to play off second balls from our centre halves or off their big lad up front (Todorov?). Their two attacking midfielders (double 10's?) just pushed up on to Sibbald who was overwhelmed as they picked up scraps and played their football high up the pitch whilst Meekison and Mochrie stood either side of Sibbald wondering when they were going to get the the ball and doing little or no pressing. Of course when we actually did get the ball we just gave it away, the two younger midfielders more than most. They looked like exactly what they were: two boys who had hardly played all season (no reserve team for United remember). The lesson here very much being that a team which on paper is full of tidy footballers means fuck all if the team is just thrown together in a different formation from usual with, what looked like just a couple of days work on the shape and patterns of play, and with several boys who clearly were not match sharp. You can tell that Airdrie team spend every minute of every training session working on the way they play and it was pretty naive of Goodwin to think that the team of rusty fringe players he put out could match that at just a few days notice. It's ironic that Mochrie and/or Meekison would probably flourish at Airdie because they'd get the time and the platform to develop as footballers with less pressure to perform and win every week. That just wasn't ever going to happen at United this season due to the need for us to win the league unless they delivered much more consistently. They just picked us off as our play got more and more desperate. At the time I thought this was by far the worst performance of the season (probably on a par with several games the season before too) and that it wouldn't get any worse than this. I also was really worried that we'd not win the league. I was to be proven wrong on both counts.
A draw away to Partick was a decent enough result on paper although we lost the first goal again (I never went because I was still scunnered about the Airdrie game, in fact I never even bothered to watch it). The crunch game was midweek against Morton however. It's fair to say pressure was on Jim Goodwin and a lot of people both in our support and in football in general were expecting us to lose this one. Thankfully though, he got this one absolutely spot-on in terms of both team selection and motivation. Having Docherty back instantly made a difference and I, not for the first time, made the point about how much better Docherty is compared to everyone else on the pitch. However, retaining Tilson in a 'run about like a headless chicken making a total nuisance of yourself' role, Grimshaw back to right back with Miller Thomson wide right, Watt in his Motherwell role wide left and Gallagher and Holt back together at the back meant we had a team of boys who would kick, snarl, harry and shitehouse Morton out of their usual approach of kicking, snarling, harrying and shitehousing. There are certain matches where you really feel like your team and manager has 'cracked it'. This was one of them. One week after thinking we were going to let first place slip out of our grasp, at the end of the Morton game I felt that the penny had finally dropped for the players and particularly, the manager about what was needed to win big games in this fucking league.
A fourth and final scudding of Arbroath followed on the Saturday. It's tempting to just skip over this but our results against Arbroath played a big part in us winning the league both in terms of points and goal difference. But more importantly, Arbroath's results against Raith helped us over the line and suggested maybe the players and manager deserve a fair bit of credit for the way they approached and performed in the Arbroath games since unlike Raith, we took them seriously. Alex Grieve even did what he was signed for and ran in behind their defence and scored a great goal. Into the final quarter of the season and doing things the right way. LOL
In the past 10 years I have witnessed some truly shite United performances, many of which are detailed here from the previous Championship stint, whilst there's about half a dozen horror shows from last season which are up there in the 'worst ever' stakes. If I was pushed, I'd say the 6-1 away to Falkirk and the 9-0 against Celtic must rank as the worst ever but I'll tell you what, the Dunfermline away game challenges them two. What makes a 'worst ever' performance? In my opinion there is usually three ingredients: 1. completely wrong team selection and tactics, 2. players downing tools and 3. a collectively inept team performance. You could add in the opposition playing particularly well but in my experience, these worst ever games usually stand out because the opposition often don't even have to play that well but still end up with a thumping victory. The Dunfermline game definitely met criteria 1 and 3 in spades. It probably didn't meet number 2 since the performance was more a case of us being half asleep/lost for the entire first half then showing much more urgency after half-time by which stage we were 2-0 down. This defeat was also more on the manager than the players. Handsome Jim thought that he'd try to replicate the Morton game and performance by playing almost the same team, with identical tactics. Unfortunately, this negated several factors. Firstly, Dunfermline were a very different type of crap from Morton. Morton are a team of shite houses with wee bully boys in midfield, dirty old crocks at the back and an immobile, barn door of a target man up front. Dunfermline are more a team of big, physical, strong-running, athletic types, most of which are pretty devoid of footballing ability. The way to beat Dunfermline was to stretch them and play the ball around their big lads. Cappielow was well suited to how we set up a few weeks ago because it's a tight, narrow pitch so being set up for a battle was the right call. On the other hand, the pitch at East End Park is fucking massive and is tailor made for us to be playing wingers. Guile and good passing rather than aggression was the way forward because they are bigger and stronger than most of the teams in this league, including us. Instead, we decided to try and condense everything down the middle, made no attempt to create 2 v 1's and ended up getting bullied all over the park. The two big lads: Fagan Walcott and the other boy who looks the spitting image of Taribo West just ran over the top of us. If that wasn't bad enough Gallagher and Holt had the nightmare to end all nightmares against the permacrocked ex-bluenose boy up front (not Wighton, the other one) who celebrated playing his only game of the season by being allowed to look like prime Didier Drogba.
I shouted to someone I know that this was the worst we've played all season after about 10-15 minutes. After the first goal you can see about four of our players all arguing about who should be doing what. This can often be for show (think Liam Smith every week) but it was clear that Gallagher, Holt, Docherty, McMann and Sibbald had absolutely no idea what they were meant to be doing because they had been set up all wrong. The other reason why it was madness is that we were set up to be narrow as fuck with Miller Thomson clearly following instructions to stop at the halfway line and either turn back, pass into a congested midfield or hit diagonal balls to Tony Watt, even when he had no-one in front of him for a good 30 yards. The fact that Goodwin didn't address this after about 20 minutes was piss poor quite frankly. He's done it before (Livingston away) and was rightly praised for his honesty. By the time he did something at half time, the game was almost gone and we missed loads of chances before allowing their third goal which was the most amateurish piece of defending I've ever seen where you could see what they were going to do in slow motion but Gallagher just chased the ball rather than watching the man. If people were having doubts about our ability to win the league and Goodwin's judgement after the Airdrie game, then by Christ you should have seen the stands that night and the internet later on. The majority were either calling for his head there and then (that's if they weren't fighting each other in the stands which some were) and the rest were saying he'll be emptied in the summer. The fact he kept '2nd touch is a tackle' Grieve on for the whole game was enough to send me into full blown keyboard warrior mode threatening to swerve hospo against Inverness the following Saturday.
A pep-talk from the wife about how I could just get pished at hospo meant the madness of missing the ICT games was averted. Scott McMann was injured (it was clear he was struggling against Dunfermline) so Goodwin tried out Miller Thomson at left back which seemed strange when he could have just played Kevin Holt there and Ross Graham at centre half. The team looked unbalanced and were struggling to create anything in the first half. We ended up a goal down yet again when Liam Grimshaw dived in and missed an interception leading to them getting a cross in to score. The second half we were all over them following a reshuffle and missed enough chances to win the game comfortably and with hindsight, actually played alright with Louis Moult's wonder goal one which would normally lift the roof off the stadium. However, failing to win at home yet again, coupled with frustration carrying over from the Dunfermline and Airdrie games meant the support were thoroughly subdued. Back in the hospo lounge after the game I felt for Louis Moult. He had to try and gee the support up when he was being interviewed and there was nothing like as many as usual (especially after a goal like the one he scored) going up for photos. I should, know, was one of them with my face tripping me. To be fair to Moult, he said the players were desperate to get it right and would beat Raith if the support got right behind them. I and most of the regulars at our table weren't so sure.
Shows what we know.
If we were feeling on a bit of a downer it subsided quickly thanks, not due to anything United did, but to the umpteenth snidey comment from someone from Raith Rovers. In this case it came right from the top with Ian Murray saying we were 'rattled'. This succeeded in tipping our support over the edge and it would now appear (along with the 'Sliding into Sunday' tweet) it had royally pissed the team off judging by all the quality swearing Dave Bowman was doing in the background on the DUTV audio commentary about Raith. The home tickets flew out the door whilst Raith's stayed in the box given that, in a spectacular act of next-level pettiness, United only gave them about two thirds of the tickets for The Shed. Magnificent. This game could have all been so different had Raith taken their chances after flying out of the traps at us in the first 5 minutes. I reckon they thought it was all set up for them. Gallagher and Holt both out injured, McMann out too if rumours were to be believed in the build up meaning we were lining up with Ross Graham and Sam McClelland (making his debut) at the back. Both were outstanding at invoking the spirit of Darren Dods. If in doubt, get it out. Thankfully once we rode this out we never looked back, not just in this game your understand but for the entire season. This was it, no more false dawns, the penny had dropped. United were not just up for the game, but we started playing to our strengths. No more kiddy-on tiki taka, no more passing around the back 600 times a game and no more passing up opportunities to attack. We started getting the ball forward early, bullying their defenders and playing our football in their half. This was perfectly illustrated by Tony Watt's cracker of a finish. It will probably never be known if our more direct style came from instructions to McClelland and Graham and if so, would Gallagher and Holt have played this way also. It did seem in the previous month that these two were starting to become a bit of a liability because of their insistence on endlessly passing around the defence slowing us down and allowing opponents to get back into shape. We probably should have been further ahead by half-time and in the second half it was really just a case of when rather than if we would get the clincher.
Its probably worth mentioning that I wasn't at the Raith game due to the young lad's team having a weekend in Newcastle and was at the Newcastle v West Ham game which was a cracker. It's just not the same though. I can't get invested in these types of games which may or may not explain why I spent about 40 minutes of it bevvying in the concourse 😉. For me it feels more like going to the pictures or the theatre than the football and can never get my head around Scottish people claiming to support these teams. Even listening to our game on DUTV on the bus was better. That's two games I've missed this season when we've put in proper high tempo performances too. Bloody typical. Ach well, a cracking night was had as the dads put in a proper boys on tour performance in the hotel bar and beyond in Newcastle. Even watching the full 90 minutes when I got back from Newcastle I could tell that United had the bit back between their teeth, the supporters had got their belief back and perhaps most importantly Raith looked like they knew the game was nearly up. United were now pulling ahead and Raith were running out of games. At least with Kirkaldy being the land of linoleum they should have plenty shiny surfaces to keep sliding on into Sundays.
United then completely dominated Queens Park at Hampden and even after missing a penalty and several good chances we still ended up winning comfortably. Tony Watt was outstanding and Kai Fotheringham's ability to drift in unmarked from the wing into scoring positions was now becoming an almost weekly occurrence. It's mental how similar most of his goals are. I don't think I've seen a winger ever score poachers goals before. I've heard a few people ask the question of why don't we try Kai up front. It's a good question. However, I think his goals tend to come from Tony Watt going out wide pulling defenders out of position giving Kai the opportunity to drift into the box unmarked. I reckon playing as an out-and-out striker would make it harder for him to get into these positions unnoticed.
A rare Friday night tv game where we won comfortably and played well against Morton pushed us ever closer to the title with Ross Docherty strolling it, Leanne Crichton was spewing and that dirty, ugly bastard Jack Baird somehow avoided being sent off at least three times. Credit to Louis Moult for not rapping the cunts puss after being elbowed, stamped on then squared up to. Kirk Clubfoot got away with yet another rugby tackle at a corner as well. Right in front of the referee too. The levels of incompetence of these clowns is beyond belief and we've got VAR to look forward to next season with a room full of the hopeless bastards running the rule over decisions and still getting it wrong. Tony Watt taking the ball off of Baird and scoring with ease was the most deserved piece of embarrassment a footballer* has ever had bestowed on him. The permutations were now starting to fly around. But next week could be it. *not a footballer
It was Raith's final act of revenge to win the Friday night game meaning we couldn't 100% win the league on the Saturday. But when Chris Mochrie followed up a shot and buried the ball from a few yards it it certainly felt like we had won it with celebrations up there with the Alkmaar home game. Joy and relief in equal measure given how late it was an otherwise turgid, nervy game. At full-time the young lad, being the well-behaved sort that he is, looked at me for permission before heading for the pitch whilst I stayed in my seat, not wanting to jinx a 37-0 defeat away to Airdrie 😄. A magic day and night all the same.
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