Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Perth show still hurting Hartley
DUNDEE’S defence came under fire because of the ease with which St Johnstone grabbed a two-goal lead on Saturday — but manager Paul Hartley insists t he whole t eam performance was a let-down.
After conceding twice in the first 20 minutes, the Dark Blues didn’t look like g etting back into the contest at McDiarmid Park.
And after the form his team had shown in recent victories over Rangers and Motherwell, their inability to repeat those good performances was a big disappointment.
Hartley said: “We’ve been excellent for the past month but I felt on Saturday we were poor in every department.
“Defensively throughout the team we were poor, ball retention was poor, the speed of our play, too many loose passes, we were sloppy and we just couldn’t get going.”
St Johnstone strikers Graham Cummins and Steven MacLean were in fine form throughout the Tayside derby and gave Dundee centre-backs Darren O’Dea and Kosta Gadzhalov a torrid time.
But for the manager, defending starts from the front.
He added: “It wasn’t just them, we’ve got to stop the first pass going up.
“We didn’t press the ball well as much as we have been doing in the last few games. It was just a real poor performance.
“I’m not going to dress it up and say we were this, that and the other — we were poor.”