Tangerines United restore a bit of pride with battling draw but gap at top widens

PLAYERRATINGS

DUNDEE United’s goalless draw at Dunfermline on Saturday was difficult to sum up.

One the one hand, after the disaster at Falkirk a week before, it was important the Tangerines showed a bit of character, some fighting spirit and came away with a result of some sort.

A battling performance, the kind of togetherness that was so obviously missing in the 6-1 hammering by the Bairns, a clean sheet and the point it brought meant those boxes were certainly ticked.

So much for the short term, a look at the bigger picture leads to the obvious conclusion this was another bad day for Csaba Laszlo and his team.

Sure they didn’t l ose but with St Mirren chalking up a comfortable win at Dumbarton, the gap to the Championship leaders was stretched to eight points.

Even with 15 games of the race for automatic promotion remaining and a game in hand in the bank, that is extremely worrying.

While United have now won just one of their last four games, the Buddies are showing little sign of faltering, so even if their own form does pick up in the coming months, closing that gap is not going to be easy.

And if Saturday represented a considerable improvement on the week before, this was nothing like the quality of the early games under manager Laszlo.

It certainly was not the performance of a team anyone would confidently predict of being capable of going on the kind of run that may be needed to reclaim top spot by the end of the campaign.

As hard as they battled for the share of the spoils at East End Park, a point was definitely the most they deserved to be taking back up the road to Tannadice.

Recently-signed Danish striker Emil Lyng marked a decent first start for his new club by going close with a header in the second half — a chance he maybe should have converted.

Later on, Paul McMullan, back after suspension, saw an angled drive well saved by Lee Robinson in the home goal.

In a game that was exciting enough but littered with too many unforced errors from both teams, the Pars definitely had a clear edge when it came to attacking threat.

On another day their main striker, Declan McManus, might just have had a hat-trick.

He saw one header brilliantly touched over by Harry Lewis and then should certainly have done better when he struck the United goalkeeper’s legs with a low shot after being put clean through. He completed his frustrating afternoon when he saw a fine curling effort come back off the post deep in injury time.

The encouragement United can take from that is, after this weekend’s break for Scottish Cup action, next up at East End Park are St Mirren.

If the Pars play like they did on Saturday, the leaders will have to be at their very best to take all three points from that Friday-night clash and Morton’s visit to Tannadice the following day could afford an opportunity to close the gap.

That, though, will require them to step up to the plate and produce their pre-Christmas form.