DERBY IN CUP IS A DUN DEAL
THERE will be a Dundee derby after all next season after the city’s teams were paired together in the Betfred Cup group stage.
Dundee United missed out on promotion to the Premiership last weekend when they lost their play-off against Hamilton.
However, they will be involved in the most high-profile group game when they take on their Tayside rivals for the first time since defeat at Dens Park sent them down in May 2016.
The game is set to take place at the Dark Blues’ ground as Dundee are one of the eight seeded clubs but the full fixture list will be issued next week.
United boss Ray McKinnon will also face former club Raith in Group C along with Cowdenbeath and Highland League champions Buckie Thistle.
There will be another derby in Group E after Kilmarnock and Ayr were drawn together. Clyde, Annan and Dumbarton are the others in that section.
There will be one all-Premiership tie with Ross County and promoted Hibs drawn together in Group D alongside Montrose, Alloa and Arbroath.
Relegated Inverness have been drawn with fellow Championship side Falkirk along with Stirling, Brechin and Forfar. Hearts will take on Dunfermline, Peterhead, East Fife and Elgin.
Motherwell face Morton as well as Edinburgh City, Berwick and Queen’s Park.
Elsewhere, Partick Thistle will face St Mirren, Airdrie, Stranraer and Livingston, while Hamilton have a couple of Lanarkshire derbies against Albion Rovers and East Kilbride with Stranraer and Livingston making up their pool.
Each team plays four matches with fixtures taking place from July 15-29.
The eight group winners and four best runners-up join European qualifiers Celtic, Aberdeen, Rangers and St Johnstone in the second round. NEIL McCANN has spent the last seven days twisting and turning as much as he ever did as a winger – and has vowed to deliver with as much accuracy as boss of Dundee.
The former Dens Park favourite helped rescue the club from the drop at the end of the season after being charged with guiding them to safety in the last five games.
He knocked back the chance to lead the team full-time on Monday when he decided to return to the comfort of the Sky studios to continue his career as a much respected analyst.
On Thursday he had completed a U-turn on that decision and last night, as the summer sunshine bathed Dens, he spoke of his hopes for the future of a club that have spent the last three years battling against a downward trajectory in the Premiership standings.
Dundee went from sixth in 2015 to eighth the following season and, in the months just past, McCann halted a slump of seven defeats in a row under Paul Hartley before eventually securing their top-flight status with a 10th-place finish.
Inconsistency has plagued the club since they won promotion in 2014 but McCann has pledged to restore order as he refuted claims players will question his commitment after so much coming and going over the last five days.
He said: “The players will not have a fear when they start working for me on June 23. I probably faced those same questions when I came back as a player in the Dee-fiant season (when Dundee defied a 25-point penalty to survive in Division One back in 2010/11).
“I came from being a Sky pundit, arrived in here on a Friday and went straight into a team that were like a band of brothers, with only 12 of them in the squad.
“I came in here from the pundit’s chair and they were thinking, ‘Who’s that guy off the telly?’ I like to think I made a little impact. They embraced me.
“I then came in before those five games at the end of the season and the players were probably thinking, ‘Is his heart in it? He’s going back to Sky in five games,’ because I was pretty constant on that as well.
“However, they were with me from the first minute. I am serious about this job. If anybody is in any doubt of where my commitment lies to this job, after the first couple of minutes of me talking to them they will soon know.
“There is one way we’re going under my tenure and that is to do everything absolutely possible to be successful. I’ve had lots of