We have the players – we have made signings that have delighted all – Miller and Fernandez to name two, but we are suffering the same age-old problem – well at least an age-old problem for United – holding onto a lead, not bottling it, staying tough for 90 minutes. We never do this. We get nervy and edgy, we let teams come at us, we lose our belief that we can win the game, we get on a back foot, hesitant, we feel the pressure, we let it get to us, and we make costly, very costly mistakes.
Make the easy pass. Get forward quickly. These are basic tenets of football theory. Yet we either hump a hopeful ball waywardly forward, and lose possession, or we play sideways nothing balls, until we hump the hopeful ball forward. We quite simply cannot play.
United players should be ashamed of themselves after yesterday, not because they lost, every football team loses, but because they deserved to lose. ‘On paper’ (that old phrase) we have a far stronger squad than the Pars, yet they out-hustled us yesterday and fully deserved their victory. Incidentally, the Pars had six first-team players out with injuries yesterday – and had a squad of 13 fully fit first team players to choose from.
What annoys me even more is that every season United ‘can’t play’ until the ‘real and assured’ likelihood of relegation sets in, and we start beating everyone in sight, just like the end of last season (skip a season of McCall finishing fifth) and just like every other season recently. We are shyte until 5 or 6 games to go, then we realise we are f***ed if we don’t pull the finger out and we do! Well how about pulling that same finger out now? Right now. This minute. This second. Today.
Chisholm said after yesterday’s result:
"I feel the support and the club has been let down by the players. Some of them probably think they are giving everything, but I think there's more to come from them and I think that was shown in the second half."
"I've got to start asking questions. It's the type of job in which you always feel the pressure."
He’s feeling the pressure now. But I’ll say this, and I’ve been saying it for years, the problem at United is psychology. There is no other possible explanation for the succession of managers and players we have seen at United over the last 10 years, players and managers who have been successful before United, successful AFTER United, yet awful while at United. What’s the betting Stevie Crawford goes on to do well? Why did Sturrock do so badly? There are dozens of examples of players who have flourished before/after also. Derek Lilley winning the CIS with Livi, Jim Hamilton prospering at Motherwell, and so on.
The squad of players we have right now simply need to keep working at their game, as getting turned over as regularly as we are doing simply is not acceptable.
United fielded:
Stillie, Wilson (Samuel 78), McCracken, Ritchie, Archibald, McInnes (Canero 61), Brebner, Kerr, Robson, Miller, Fernandez.