McGowan left baffled by rollercoaster displays

Dundee’s Paul McGowan admits he is completely baffled by the Jekyll and Hyde performances the Dark Blues have produced this season.

The Dens men went from the highs of backto-back victories over Hamilton in the league and Inverness in the Scottish Cup to last weekend’s demoralising 4-1 defeat against Ross County.

The midfielder is the first to acknowledge that conceding four goals at home to a Staggies side rooted to the foot of the table is simply not acceptable.

And McGowan is determined to do all in his power to help the team attain a high level of consistency between now and the end of the season, starting on Saturday when they return to cup action against Motherwell at Dens.

He said: “When we lost that second goal I was saying to myself, ‘Come on, let’s get ourselves going again’.

“But we didn’t and it is really going to hurt. Now we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“It’s not acceptable getting beaten 4-1 by Ross County. With all due respect, they haven’t been going well while we were and it shouldn’t have happened.

“We are so up and so down – it baffles me how we can be so good one week, for a couple of games in fact, and then we have performances like that.

“We are a good side but to lose to Ross County is just not acceptable. We need to get back to playing the way we know we can.

“It doesn’t really matter what the competition is, we have to show real character.”