Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
No excuses for last two Dee defeats
AS a Dundee player, right now it would be easy to make excuses for the post winter-break slump that’s seen defeats against St Mirren in the cup and Aberdeen in the league.
For the Dark Blues, there is little doubt the January interval came at the wrong time.
As they beat St Johnstone 3-0 in the last game before it, they were flying and probably would have preferred the next game to come as soon as possible and not three weeks later.
And when the games did come round again, they were denied the services of skipper and influential defensive presence of Darren O’Dea.
He’s had to sit out the last two matches because of cup and league suspensions.
And while the displays against the Buddies and Dons were not good, luck has not been on Dundee’s side.
In the cup-tie, Marcus Haber was denied by the crossbar and, with the scores still level, the same happened to Paul McGowan up at Pittodrie.
On Friday night, what looked a dodgy linesman’s flag for offside against Haber also denied Craig Wighton what would have been the opening goal of the game.
But when centre-half Julen Etxabeguren looks back at those defeats, all he sees are excuses — lame ones.
And the big Spaniard is having none of it. He puts the recent woes down to just one thing — poor play by him and his team-mates.
He knows that’s got to change if the team are to get to where they feel they should be this season.
“We need more consistency if we are going to get better results,” he said.
“We want to be top six and we can be top six.
“If we are going to do that, we have to play the best way we can week in, week out. Just now it is not happening.
“We cannot play so well against St Johnstone and then play the way we have against St Mirren and Aberdeen. We must sort it out, we have to.
“We have two good games when we