Encouraging start for United and Rovers

Predictions for the season based on the first game are fraught with danger. Many a team has got off to an encouraging start, only to fall away spectacularly as the campaign slips from summer into autumn and autumn into winter.

What happened to Raith Rovers just last year is as glaring an example of that as you could ask for.

It would take a particularly pessimistic or defeatist United or Raith supporter to have left Tannadice on Saturday not feeling as if their team has put down a decent marker on day one, however.

Barry Smith has done well to get his defensive organisation from the training ground on to the matchday pitch as quickly as this.

They already have the look of a well-drilled team who would survive in this year’s Championship.

They are of course in League One, and they have two course and distance strikers for the demands of that division. That’s why Liam Buchanan’s two great chances missed at the weekend shouldn’t be a cause for concern.

United already have a different feel to them and two of the players Ray McKinnon has highest hopes for are already delivering.

Scott Fraser was a class act. His rolling of Kyle Benedictus set in motion the opening goal. Paul McMullan, the player who scored it, was the man of the match.

If you can blood six new signings from the start and three off the bench and still win, with probably the shortest pre-season programme of any of the clubs at their level, that’s a pretty good sign.

Nothing that I saw on Saturday has dissuaded me from the belief that two sides in despair at the end of last season will be celebrating at the end of this one.

Scott Fraser: “a class act”.