The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Reynolds confident for tests ahead in top flight
There will be no easy games in the Premiership but Dundee United captain Mark Reynolds is confident they can get some big results next season, writes Calum Woodger.
United will open their season by welcoming St Johnstone to Tannadice on August 1 and will take on Motherwell, Hibs, Ross County, Celtic and Kilmarnock before the month is out.
It is a potentially tricky start for the Championship winners but defender Reynolds believes they are more than capable of holding their own.
“On your day you need to turn up and play well,” the 33-year-old said.
“Even sometimes when you turn up and give your best in the Premiership you can get beat.
“That’s going to be a new sensation for a couple of the boys.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have played in the Premiership for a number of years and you know there’s no easy games, but there’s a confidence in the squad.
“We’ve got a good group of boys in the changing room, good players and we feel going into these games we can more than hold our own.
“We feel we’re capable of getting some big results next season.”
It’s been a long road to get to this point for the Tangerines after four years in Scotland’s second tier and the coronavirus shutdown of Scottish football to contend with.
Reynolds insists the squad are just happy to have games to look forward to once more but the centrehalf admits trips to former clubs Aberdeen and Motherwell hold appeal.
“For us, as players, we’re excited about every game,” he added.
“We’ve spoken about, certainly since I came in here, the focus being about getting back into the Premiership.
“All last season, when we were pulling away with the league, the talk was just about getting back into the league and challenging ourselves against the best in Scotland.
“We’re going to get to do that next season and we’re all looking forward to it. We feel as though we’ve got a good squad, a good group of players and just looking forward to getting the season started.
“We’re glad to be going back to places like Parkhead and Ibrox and, for me personally, going up to Aberdeen and back to Motherwell – the team I started out with.
“There’ll be a lot of boys in the team with fixtures they’ll be looking forward to going to but I think, for a lot of them, it’ll be a good experience to go to a place like Parkhead or Ibrox when it’s absolutely bouncing.
“I think every game is going to be huge for us next season.”
The Tangerines will be entering the new term under a different manager after Robbie Neilson’s swift departure for Hearts.
Reynolds admits his exit was a huge shock but that they must carry on under new man Micky Mellon as normality starts to return to our game.
“It was a huge surprise,” he said. “I think we’d done a lot of work over the break and we’d spoken about going forward, things we want to change, things we did well last season and what we wanted to improve on.
“There was a real collective effort from everyone in terms of what we wanted to do next season, how we could make things better going forward and Robbie was a big part of that.
“For him just to up and leave so quickly was a huge shock, especially with all the work we’ve done in the background.”
Reynolds added: “For us it feels like we’re getting back to some kind of normal.
“It’s been great getting back to contact training and we’d been waiting on the fixtures getting announced. That makes it that bit more real for us.
“Now we know it’s going to be St Johnstone up first at home it’s great for us to be able to kick-start our Premiership season.
“We know the fans have been waiting so long to get back into the Premiership and get the games under way.
“Although it looks like there might not be that many fans in the ground when that happens, I’m sure they’ll be able to watch it at home and just be glad to see us back where we feel we belong.”