Late goal proves United up for fight

CHAMPIONSHIP: Murray believes Tangerines showed belief required

Simon Murray believes Dundee United have shown the bottle required to get through the play-offs.

The Tangerines looked to have blown their chance of pipping Falkirk to second spot in the Championship when they were pegged back to 2-2 by St Mirren with just four minutes to go at Tannadice last Saturday. However, they picked themselves off the floor and scored a dramatic winner through Blair Spittal in the 90th minute to stay just a point behind the Bairns with two regulation season fixtures remaining.

Whoever wins the now two-horse race to be runners-up to champions Hibs will be rewarded by skipping the quarter-final stage of the Premiership play-offs and will instead sit back and wait to face the winners of the third versus fourth two-legged tie in the semi-final.

Murray, who will be available for Saturday’s home clash with Dumbarton before being suspended for the Morton game at Cappielow, feels United have shown they have the mettle needed for what are sure to be a few fraught weeks.

SAINTS AIM TO MAKE MARK:

“Aberdeen got to the group stages a few years ago and they’re getting to the play-off stages.

“And look at the Irish teams. I played with Stephen O’Donnell who was in the Shamrock Rovers team that did well. And he was captain of Dundalk last year.

“The manager and the players have got experience of dealing with these European occasions.

“We’d be in a much better position to handle them if we do get there.”

Craig added: “Aberdeen beating Hibs means the manager can set up a pre-season programme for that scenario, if we get there.

“And, despite the talk you hear of European football being a hindrance, the club has shown it can cope with coming back early in the summer.

“It’s just a case of making sure we get the job done now and finish fourth. It’s in our hands but there’s a lot of work to do.

“You never know, if we go on a run, we haven’t given up hope of catching Rangers. But that’s obviously in their hands to lose.”

The points total needed to get Saints across the line is guesswork but Craig is pretty sure they can’t afford a repeat of the run-in that led to his one European campaign.

“We ended up losing every game after the split but there were more places in those days and Rangers were penalised that season,” he recalled.

“If we lose every game this time I don’t think we’ll get into Europe!

“We’ve put ourselves in a great position to do it. Four points clear going into the split is something we would definitely have taken. We’d have taken it at the start of 2017 as well after getting beaten 3-0 at Dens Park.

“At that time people were thinking Dundee had maybe turned a corner and we’ve maybe gone the other way.

“For this club to be competing for Europe for the sixth year in a row is a great achievement.

“There’s a lot of hard work to get fourth but it’s great to know that if we do get there, it will mean European football.

“We’ve got two tough away games but it will be good to finish with three home matches.”

Saints have another clash with Aberdeen to look forward to at the weekend and they will be looking to make a faster start at Pittodrie than they did at McDiarmid Park.

“We were disappointed with the first half-hour to 40 minutes last time,” Craig said. “But in the second half we were more like ourselves and caused them problems. We’ll be looking to do that again on Saturday.

“Obviously they’re going well and now have another cup final to look forward to. It will be difficult but we know that it’s a game we can win.

“No disrespect to Inverness or Ross County but we could have been going to play them in a relegation battle. You’d much rather be going to Pittodrie and Parkhead.

“We just hope we can have the same performance levels as we produced last year at this stage of the season when we won four and drew one.”