Simple approach United’s quest to

T H E joke at Fi rh i l l on

Friday after Dundee United came back to win a game that saw them lose the opening goal for the first ti me si nce Ma rch, was that boss Robbie Neilson’s half-time team talk had been a stroke of genius.

Mark Connolly uses another word to describe it and, if first it might not seem so, the defender sees it as even higher praise.

“What the gaffer said was simple,” the Irishman reveals.

“He had a talk with us at half-time and he said just pass the ball, do the simple things but just do it quicker.

“That’s what we did and we came back to win.

“I think in the first half we’d tried to force it. We wanted to play and pass it and we started well.

“But then we lost the opening goal and Partick got into quite a compact shape.

“It got a bit too slow and it wasn’t like we were against Inverness but

I still don’t think we were playing terribly.

“They were trying to wait for us to make a mistake and catch us on the break.”

Connolly believes his gaffer’s simple instruction at the interval was a message that didn’t just serve United well in the second half in Glasgow but will in the months ahead.

“We have the players going forward like Lawrence Shankland, and the subs that came on against

Thistle were outstanding – if we get the ball to them they will get goals.”

As well as praise the manager,

Connolly is quick to highlight his belief the men on the pitch for

United are now a group capable of finding a way to win even when not everything is going to plan.

He feels that will be a massive attribute in the battle for automatic promotion this term.

“The big thing for us is that, while we were not as good as we were in that first game, we still came through and got the win.

“We worked it out, figured it out and dealt with things. In the second half they had one header from a corner but, other than that, I didn’t think they had loads at our end of the park.

“And I thought that, when we got going again, some of our link-up play and passing was outstanding.”

While he’s on the subject of the strengths of this squad, Connolly believes another big plus is the feeling everyone at Tannadice is

There is a feeling of togetherness in the Dundee United squad says Mark Connolly. Mark Connolly was first on the scene after Peter Pawlett struck Dundee