Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Dundee take heart from Celtic defeat
DUNDEE boss Paul Hartley insists his players “can take a lot of heart” from their performance in the 2-1 defeat at Parkhead.
The Dark Blues were expected by many to be swept aside by a Celtic side running away with the Premiership title race.
And it l ooked that way after 60 minutes with Leigh Griffiths and Nir Bitton strikes making it 2-0 to the Hoops.
Dundee rallied, though, and a goal from Marcus Haber gave them hope with 20 minutes to go.
Then, i n the dying stages, moments after coming on, substitute Faissal El Bakhtaoui blazed over with just the keeper to beat.
It was a golden chance to become the first domestic side to take anything from Parkhead this season.
Hartley, though, was full of praise for the attitude shown by his players.
He said: “The chance for El Bakhtaoui, it’s a wonderful opportunity in the last couple of minutes — he’s right through on goal and you expect him to score but he’ll miss other chances and he’s really down but he’s got to remain positive.
“But I think overall we had a good game plan, we’re playing against a good team with good players, quality throughout it and, if you look at the two goals, they’re outside the box, they never really cut us open.
“We knew they would have a lot of possession but we hit them on the counter a couple of times and we had some good situations.
“I think we’ve given them two difficult games this season, at Dens and on Saturday, we always seem to do pretty well against them.
“We’ve probably not had the results our performances have deserved but I think the players can take a lot of heart from that game. They were disappointed but I’m pleased with how they performed.
“Nobody gave us a chance on Saturday — when you go 2-0 down, a lot of teams would fold but we didn’t, we kept at it.”
The Dundee gaffer wasn’t too happy with the award of the free-kick that led to Griffiths’ opener right on half-time.
Skipper Darren O’Dea dived in and looked to have won the ball but referee Bobby Madden saw it as a foul and booked the defender.
Hartley added: “Players can’t tackle nowadays without getting free-kicks against them. I felt it was a good tackle by O’Dea and he gets booked for it which doesn’t help us.”