Utd have added mental strength

ASSISTANT head coach G ordon For rest has hailed the “leadership” show n by Dundee United’s new recruits.

Despite a large chunk of the club’s 11 new signings arriving on deadline day, manager Robbie Neilson’s assistant Gordon says players like Mark Reynolds, Mark Connolly, Calum Butcher and Peter Pawlett have already shown they’ve got the character to take the Tangerines to the next level.

That level is the Premiership and they’ll get a taste of that this weekend when travelling to top-flight St Mirren on Saturday.

And Gordon is backing the Tangerines to repeat the display in their 2-1 win over Morton last weekend.

He said: “The new players didn’t have much contact with the staff and the other players but straight away you could see on the pitch they were right behind what we are trying to do as a club.

“There was a good energy about the guys, they were passionate and a bit of leadership came out on the pitch as well. It was so pleasing to see how they slid into that game but also they’ve been on the training pitch this week and it seems like they’ve been here a while.

“It can take time to bed in but we can’t have that with 13 games to go.

“It was important we got players in with the right character and mentality and we knew they would fit in straight away.

“It’s been great and credit to them for that but also credit to the players already here for reaching out and bringing them in.”

The club are hoping for a sellout of away tickets at St Mirren this week with 1,000 of their 1,500 allocation already taken up.

Centre-back Mark Reynolds, on loan from Aberdeen, is one of 11 new faces at Tannadice brought in during the January transfer window.