Dreadful, pitiful, terrible, poor, atrocious, woeful, lamentable...

That’s what chairman Thompson thinks of this failing United side

WHAT is the definition of abysmal? For Dundee United’ sunder-fire players, our headline tells its own story. If they had been in any doubt beforehand as to exactly what Tannadice chairman Stephen Thompson thought of them, then his explosive rant on the club website after a dismal 3-0 defeat to relegation rivals Motherwell would have left them in absolutely no doubt whatsoever. It is lower than a snake’s belly. Now, lads, the mission from Mr Thompson, should you choose to accept it, is to pick yourself up off the floor and use these last 13 games to save his club — as well as your own reputations, of course.

These are curious motivational tactics from the chairman who, when he sacked manager Jackie McNamara in September, was to be found boasting that the United squad was ‘one of the most exciting in British football’ and that there was ‘a lot to be upbeat about’.

And yet, just four months later, amid continued criticism of his decision to sell star trio Gary Mackay- Steven, Stuart Armstrong and Nadir Ciftci to Celtic over the past 12 months, here he is sending out yet another contradictory message.

In January, Thompson stated that his club’s problems were ‘not to do with the money we spent, not to do with player sales’.

He continued at the time: ‘It’s about our recruitment. Our recruitment last summer (by McNamara) was poor, at best, and that’s why we are where we are.’

But the chairman’s decision to take a verbal flamethrower to his squad in public yesterday is perhaps the most baffling of all. It’s an approach that has already demonstrably backfired for current manager Mixu Paatelainen, as it did for Terry Butcher at Hibs before him.

After a 5-0 defeat at Celtic Park, just his second match in charge after McNamara’s exit, the Finn branded his team ‘ weak’ and ‘rubbish with a capital R’.

He followed that up by accusing the squad of players left behind by McNamara as being completely lacking in tactical nous.

The result? Five points from the next available 30; with Paatelainen’s reign overall seeing nine points taken from 45 in the Premiership.

The troubled Tannadice club are currently 13 points adrift at the foot of the table, with 13 games remaining.

Given that United were two points clear of bottom side Partick Thistle when McNamara was axed, this has been a managerial gamble that has backfired spectacularly.

Not that Paatelainen, whose own recruitment and tactics have been very much open to question, drew much ire in his boss’s public blast yesterday.

United fans are not debating whether Paatelainen can keep them up, but whether he should be trusted to help them bounce back.

A look at fans’ websites yesterday would not have made comfortable reading for the former Kilmarnock and Hibs boss.

While Thompson’s demand that the players save the club from relegation is a forlorn hope, one achievable target is to win the five points needed to avoid being tagged as the worst top-flight team of the modern era.

Since the ill-fated SPL was formed back in 1998, the worst-performing side has been Livingston, who amassed just 18 points in 2005-06 under Paul Lambert and his successor John Robertson.

Damningly for United, four of the worst-performing bottom teams since 1998 were all either in or rapidly approaching f i nancial meltdown — Livingston, Gretna in 2008, Dunfermline in 2012 and Hearts in 2014.

So, perhaps the most valid comparison to United’s plight — stuck on 14 points — is the St Johnstone side of 2001-2002, who finished bottom with just 21 points.

With relegation essentially nailed on, it is a dizzying descent for a club who, just 12 months ago, were flying and whom Thompson confirmed were working with the third-biggest budget in the division.

A League Cup semi-final win over Aberdeen saw McNamara steer United to back-to-back major finals for the first time since the legendary Jim McLean did the same 29 years previously.

So confident was the mood that goalkeeper Radoslaw Cierzniak boasted they could even win an unprecedented Treble.

But the seeds of decline were sown just 24 hours after that 2-1 League Cup semi-final win over the Dons, when chairman Thompson sold Armstrong and Mackay-Steven to Celtic. Ciftci would follow them to Parkhead in the summer, before being declared surplus to requirements by Ronny Deila.

United’s form plunged off a cliff without their star trio, but any kind of sympathy for McNamara evaporated completely when it leaked into the public domain that the manager was entitled to a cut of outgoing player sales.

The atmosphere at Tannadice had become toxic after the club’s worst league start since 2003 and Thompson sacked his manager in a corridor at McDiarmid Park in September.

Amid the general gloom in a truly disastrous season, which has seen Championship side Hibs rack up more more wins over Premiership opposition than United, there have been tiny specks of light.

One of t hem has been t he performances of young midfielder Blair Spittal.

Speaking before his chairman’s verbal haymaker, the 20-year- old demonstrated the optimism of youth yesterday when he insisted that, although there were probably those within Tannadice who had given up hope, all was still not lost.

Realistically, in his position, what else could he say?

‘Not a lot of people will be backing us,’ Spittal admitted.

‘ There will probably even be people inside Tannadice who won’t have the most confidence in us doing it.

‘But we will just keep our heads down and keep working hard, and hopefully we can get the breaks to get us out of this mess. We have to keep believing.

‘It’s a big mountain for us to climb now. We know that and we know it’s going to be difficult.

‘But everyone has to rally together and keep going. We have to keep plugging away. It’s going to be hard but we will give it our best shot.

‘We all have to stick together, keep our heads down and work as hard as we possibly can to get out of this mess that we are in.

‘We need to put the Motherwell performance to the back our of minds. It wasn’t good enough, but we have shown before that we can do it.

‘We need to look at performances like Kilmarnock, when we won 5-1, and try to take it forward into the next game.

‘This wasn’t good enough, but we have 13 massive games left and we need to rally together now. ‘We can’t let our heads go down.’ After the publication of the chairman’s statement yesterday lunchtime, one can only wonder where these ‘abysmal’ Dundee United players’ heads are at now.