Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
United front needed to seal play-off spot
CSABA Laszlo wants Dundee United’s regained fighting spirit to see them clinch their play-off spot this week.
Back-to-back Tannadice wins over St Mirren and Falkirk have left the Tangerines a maximum of five points away from securing a top-four spot.
Victories in the final three fixtures would even give them a chance of finishing as high as second.
As he prepares his team for trips to Brechin tomorrow and Queen of the South on Saturday, Csaba’s first target is to end the week knowing he’ll be involved in the post-season fixtures.
And he believes the determination shown in securing 1-0 wins over the Buddies and the Bairns last week can go a long way to achieving that.
“If we can keep the spirit and help each other, it will be OK,” he said.
“Against Falkirk it was very important to see that if somebody made a mistake the next player was there and tried to help.
“This is what I want against Brechin, the team performance must be good.
“If we can do this I think we will have a good position for t he play-offs.”
Looking back at the weekend action, Csaba felt his team were worthy of the three points.
His only real frustration was more goals were not added to Thomas Mikkelsen’s early opener.
“If you win 1-0 you get the three points. I am just a little bit sad that, again, we got the chance to make the game 2-0 and a little bit easier, but didn’t.
“Generally, I am very pleased with the team performance. To be honest we didn’t give any possibility to Falkirk for goal scoring.
“They tried after 1-0 to come at us and maybe had more ball possession but we were always dangerous with the counter attacks down the wings.”
There was praise for goal hero Mikkelsen, whose robust forward play has proved a big asset i n United wins in the past couple of games.
“Thomas Mikkelsen really was a target man, he won a lot of headers and kept the ball a lot of the time,” added Csaba.
“He tried to play together with Scott McDonald in the front.
“I think Thomas is a very honest player.
“He is not Messi or Maradona, he is not fantastic with the ball, but he has a big heart and he is a good team player.”