Dundee United Manager Jim Goodwin spoke to the broadcast media to preview our William Hill Premiership clash with St Mirren on Matchday 23.
The boss discussed bouncing back against the Buddies, a defining week, a squad packed full of character and team news ahead of another midweek battle under the lights at the Calforth Construction Arena at Tannadice Park.
Watch the full press conference below!
ON A FRUSTRATING AFTERNOON AT FIR PARK
We went to Motherwell with a game plan of trying to be aggressive and trying to go man for man with them all over the park and for the majority of the game, it worked.
We forced Motherwell into playing quite direct, a lot of long balls behind our back line and we knew we were leaving ourselves vulnerable at times in that situation. Up until the penalty kick, Motherwell didn’t have one shot on target.
We were really disappointed at the time with the award of the penalty kick. Having watched it back again and saw the angles that the VAR guys had to look at, my disappointment remains the same.
I think it’s a really soft penalty in a situation where two players are grappling in the box, which happens numerous times in any game up and down the country. It’s such an important game for both teams and for a penalty to be awarded in that situation was really a poor decision in my opinion.
ON A BATTLE WITH THE BUDDIES
I’m confident with the starting eleven that I’m going with that we’re going to be more than a match for St Mirren in terms of the physical aspect of it.
Then come Friday, we’ll be in a good place and ready to go to try and get ourselves into the Semi-Final of the Scottish Cup. We’re still looking up the way, but we’re not dismissing the fact that those teams below us are closing the gap.
We’re sitting seventh in the league at the moment and as I said it’s not a position that we’re satisfied with, especially off the back of last season’s fourth-placed finish. We have to just focus on the games that are coming now. That starts tomorrow night against St Mirren – it’s another really difficult challenge but one that we are very much looking forward to.
Both teams will be approaching the game trying to win and trying to take all three points. St Mirren have been on a really difficult run of form and it’s important for us to get back to winning ways.
It’s a completely different style of play to what we faced on Saturday against Motherwell – it’ll be a lot more direct, and we’ll have to defend the box well. We’re going to have to stand up and be counted in those situations but at the same time, we’ve caused St Mirren a few problems going the other way this season and we’ve got to try and do that again.
Going into the Motherwell game we were unbeaten in four, we were playing okay and then we’re obviously really disappointed to lose on Saturday. But the reaction from the players after a defeat has always been positive and I can’t fault them for their commitment or their effort.
We just need to match St Mirren’s physicality tomorrow, do the basics well and hopefully we do enough to earn all three points to take a bit of positive momentum into the big game on Friday against Falkirk.
ON OUR TOP SIX HOPES
Obviously, with the results going the way they did at the weekend with Falkirk having a terrific victory over Kilmarnock and then ourselves losing, the gap has widened again.
We’re not stupid enough to think that it’s going to be easy or straightforward and Falkirk only need to pick up another win out of the next four games and they’ve secured it. But while it’s mathematically still possible, we’ll keep fighting.
We’ve seen some really strange things happen in football over the years and there’s no reason why we can’t keep pushing and see where it takes us.
ON TURNING OUR FORTUNES AROUND
If there’s one thing that I can never point the finger at this group of players for, it’s a lack of effort, commitment or professionalism. We know we haven’t got enough points on the board at this stage of the season.
We also know that we’ve made mistakes at times in certain games that have been really costly and I include myself in that as well – it’s not always just about the players. We’re very much a collective here and we win and lose together. But obviously we find ourselves in a position at the table that we’re not overly satisfied with.
Hopefully over the next few weeks, we can get back to performing to a consistent levels, pick up enough points in the league and make sure we get to Hampden in the Scottish Cup.
ON THE DISRUPTIVE SCHEDULE
There hasn’t been a great deal of time in between games to plan and prepare. It’s been a really quick turnaround in terms of trying to get the players ready for the games.
There hasn’t been a huge amount of analysing and, certainly from a staff perspective, it doesn’t give you much time to work on things that you’d like to improve. That’s part and parcel of the job.
This is a really tough week for us with three really important games in the space of six days. We’ll make sure we’ve got enough in the tank for tomorrow.
ON TEAM NEWS
Craig Sibbald is still missing, as is Bert Esselink. Other than that we’re not doing too bad. Saturday against Motherwell was the seventh game in four weeks and obviously we’ve got another couple of games to come here in the next four or five days.
It’s been a really demanding period for the group, hence why we’ve had to rotate the squad a little bit recently just to try and keep a bit of freshness in the team. We’ll do the same again tomorrow night and then hopefully once we come through this game we’ll have a fully fit group to choose from.
