This club’s not for the paint hearted
TANNADICE CRISIS Just how did a side of United’s stature wind up clinging on for a 5-1 drubbing at home?
THE old gym at Tannadice is a good place to start in the hope of giving Dundee United fans a much-needed laugh.
Back in the early 90s Jim McLean had dished out some of his own unique brand of punishment for a perceived misdemeanour.
Three players, Duncan Ferguson, John O’Neil and Andy McLaren, were handed paint brushes and told to get to work on putting a fresh coat on the walls.
What proceeded was straight out of Take Hart as they scrawled in white emulsion: “JIM MCLEAN IS A C**T”.
Assistant boss Paul Sturrock stuck his head in the gym to assess the job and immediately called for wee Jim to come downstairs from his office and have a look for himself.
There stood the three amigos, a not so flattering opinion of their gaffer blazoned across the wall in huge letters.
Jim took one look at the scene and his legendary combover whiplashed across his face as he erupted in rage.
A manager who was never averse to an opportunity to claim back a few weeks wages was duly obliged and the trio were hammered in the pocket.
One of many tales from time spent at Dundee United as a youth and it makes the current debacle all the more saddening.
But just how did a club of this stature reach the point of sitting in and holding on for a 5-1 weekend defeat at home to Ross County?
Csaba Laszlo’s sacking only adds to a long list of managerial appointments who’ve crashed and burned at a club that has lost its dignity. There can’t be many sides in football that turns around staff so quickly.
Where fresh starts become false dawns with such regularity and where the decisions at the top have been consistently calamitous.
Look at the current squad, where are the leaders? Where are the players who are prepared to give more for the cause than the minimum? United were a unified group back in the glory days because the experienced players knew they had to deliver or face the wrath of a manager who to this day triggers Vietnam-esque flashbacks at his reaction for failing to get the victory.
An iron first has been replaced by limp leadership in the boardroom, the pitch and in the managerial department.
Since McLean left as manager in 1993, Ray McKinnon was the sixth former United player to accept the challenge of trying to revive the club and was treated abysmally, hurried out the door less than 16 months into a three-year-deal.
Then there was Laszlo and a long list of signings that was met with bemusement in football circles.
Let’s just say some weren’t a first pick to stand by your side in the trenches.
This has been a club whose purpose seems to be the protection of a cotton wool generation of footballers.
Pea-hearted and bloated with too many players not prepared to go the extra yard.
That opinion comes from within football, players who have recently left United and some learned observers.
Say what you want about the 80s and 90s at Tannadice. At times it was brutal.
But it never lacked spirit, personality ... and painters.
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