Utd battle First-half treble, then Tangerines are forced to hang on in Dumfries

PLAYERRATINGS

DUNDEE United are looking forward to their second Challenge Cup Final after an entertaining, if unusual, Saturday evening in Dumfries.

The Tangerines’ 3-2 semi-final win over Queen of the South was as close and hard-fought as the score suggests.

But 3-0 up at the break, the impression for some might be Ray McKinnon’s team were cruising to victory then almost threw it away. That was never really the case. While the advantage at the end of 45 minutes meant United should have played out the second half in more comfortable fashion than they ultimately did, other than the score at the turn around, at no time was this a one-sided affair.

In the first half, the difference between the teams was the visitors took their chances and the home side didn’t.

Inside the first minute a slack pass from the otherwise impressive Charlie Telfer presented Queens’ star man Stephen Dobbie with a chance.

He didn’t take it but when horrific defending by Andy Dowie handed an opportunity to Telfer at the other end barely two minutes later, he punished the mistake by firing in the opener.

When more bad defending presented Scott Fraser with a chance in just the 11th minute, he put his team two up.

Ten minutes before half-time the best player on the park, Tony Andreu, was involved in and finished the game’s best move with a sublime shot from the edge of the area.

If it looked all over, before and after those goals United had been given plenty warnings they were in a contest.

Dobbie had gone close on a further couple of occasions, Darren Brownlie missed with a head and the quality of the Doonhamers’ play when i n possession was keeping them honest.

Even so, the task at the start of the second half seemed simple — see out the first 15 minutes or so and victory would be guaranteed.

That didn’t happen, however, and once Dobbie pulled a goal back six minutes in, it was clear there was going to be a bombardment of Luis Zwick’s goal.

So it proved and had, with half an hour still left on the clock, Dobbie not somehow missed the kind of close range chance he probably never has before or will again, the outcome might have been different.

As it was, when former Dundee striker Derek Lyle netted in injurytime, it was too little, too late, for Gary Naysmith’s battling side.

While the likeable former Scotland full-back felt over the 90 minutes his team played the better football, United had a right to feel they deserved their win.

It didn’t happen quite often enough but, when the Tangerines got the ball down and passed it, they looked a class above the opposition defence.

Had they shown a little more composure, they might well have recorded the emphatic victory that looked on the cards at half-time.

On top of that, in Andreu they had a genuine class act in their ranks.

When the Frenchman is in this kind of form, he is quite simply too good for defences at Championship level to cope with.

His goal was a stand-out, but his overall display was just as good.