Murray is unique player

The Simon Murray story is an inspirational one. You’d have to say that the way he plays up front for Dundee United is unique. The Arbroath boys who played with him are delighted that he’s taken his opportunity and I think that will be shared by fans across the country. It’s because of his back story. He played juniors and lower league professional football before he got his chance at United in the Premiership, and how often does that happen these days?

Credit to Jackie McNamara and United for giving him a three-year contract when they signed him. It would have been a waste of time giving him a year because somebody coming from the part-time game needs time to adjust.

You can see that he has worked on his game but the best thing about Murray is that he doesn’t try to be something he isn’t. He still has a real work ethic, chasing down everything.

And he still gets shots away whenever he can, and United wouldn’t be in this play-off final if it wasn’t for that. There must be more rough diamonds in the lower leagues and hopefully the Simon Murray story will encourage other top clubs to take a chance on them.

I must admit that after the first game against Falkirk, I thought they were strong favourites to beat United.

So credit to Ray McKinnon’s men for the way in which they fought back to get through to the final. There is a gap between the bottom of the Premiership and the top of the Championship but I think it’s only a small one.

United will rightly fancy their chances. Having to play on Hamilton’s plastic pitch in the second leg could be a problem though – I know they’ve just played on Falkirk’s but you don’t hear many away teams speaking well about the Hamilton one.

I know that the majority of Dundee fans will want United to stay down but for the city, it would be better if they were back up. And it’s the same for the Premiership. There’s no doubt that United bring more to the league than Hamilton.

One week Dundee are world beaters and the next week they don’t turn up.

That’s pretty much been the story of their season. It’s happened too often and there’s no doubt that they were far closer to being relegated than was comfortable.

Whether it’s Neil McCann in charge or not next season, that needs to be sorted. Changes to the squad are inevitable. I think Neil has certainly earned the right to be offered the job.

He achieved the target of keeping Dundee up and deserves credit for putting the tin hat on and getting out of the Sky Sports studio.

Picture: SNS. Simon Murray’s work ethic has made him a stand-out in recent times for Dundee United.