Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
United result shows the gap does exist
THIS might sound strange but I wasn’t too worried by Dundee United’s Scottish Cup exit.
Yes it was disappointing, but I don’t think it told gaffer Ray McKinnon anything he didn’t already know.
I’m sure he was well aware that if his team were not close to their best, taking them to a decent Premiership side like Ross County was going to be hazardous.
So it proved and the 6-2 defeat is a sore one to take.
In terms of their league campaign in the Championship, though, if United can get back to winning form soon they will still be in with a chance of promotion.
And if they get it, the manager will know he will have to make changes to certain areas of his team to get them to where he wants them to be.
He’s got some quality in the shape of players like Tony Andreu and Willo Flood.
And there are some decent youngsters there who can grow into good performers capable of playing well at top-flight level.
Honest pros as they are, there are others who are basically playing at their level right now.
That means if United can get up this season, over the summer there will have to be a reshuffle of personnel.
If Saturday was an eye-opener, it was probably for the fans who made the long journey and had to peer through the fog to see their team lose heavily.
It might have made them realise that while, overall, good progress has been made since last summer, when everyone was predicting a very hard season, there is still plenty rebuilding to do.
And, for me, Saturday was another example — despite Dundee’s shock loss to St Mirren — to show those who say there is not a gulf between the Premiership and most of the Championship that they’re wrong.
Games don’t have to be completely one-sided, with the top-flight team camped in their opponents’ half to show that. It wasn’t like that on Saturday but what we saw were Premiership strikers who had the quality to punish mistakes ruthlessly.
As well as they’ve defended at times, for most of this season United have been able to get away with one or two errors at the back.
Make the same mistakes against the kind of attackers they faced at the Global Energy Stadium and it’s a safe bet the result will be goals lost and a heavy defeat.