Mellon laments wasted opportunities and Collum’s handball call

Dundee United man ager M icky Mellon believes his side should have been awarded a penalty during the 3-0 defeat by Celtic.

The ball appeared to strike Christopher Jullien’s arm in the box on 37 minutes but referee Willie Collum waved away the United appeals. Soon after, David Turnbull’s long-range strike crashed in off the post to put the champions two goals in front.

"My gut instinct right away, yes. The reaction of the players all at the same time, yes,” said Mellon.

"And the way I saw it and the penalties I have seen given recently, I believe it was a stonewaller. They have got to go our way if we are going to get something.

"I' m frustrated because I didn' t feel that we were aggressive enough in the first half.

"I thought we gave Celtic too much respect. We were a bit too passive. Maybe down to the first time being here for a lot of them but we will grow out of the performance and playing at a place like Celtic."

There was a minute' s silence before the game in tribute to the late former Dundee United title-winning manager Jim Mclean who died on Boxing Day at the age of 83, and the players wore black armbands.

MarcMcNulty had an effort cleared off the line and Lawrence S hank land blasted over the bar in United’s two best chances of the game. "They were better than reasonable opportunities for us,” added Mellon.

“When you get that at tough places like this, you need to take them. And then you hope that certain decisions maybe go your way.”

Next up for United is a trip nor th to face Aberdeen on Saturday. Mellon is expecting another tough assessment of his squad.

The Tannadice boss said: “Aberdeen have a lot of experienced players at this level. The challenge for us is to go and compete with that.

"We’ve got to show growth and improvement from the lesson that we learnt today. That’s what we continually try to do.

“It’ s another game that will ask us a lot of questions. We’ve got to be better at the asks and get some belief that we can be a force against these types of teams.

“We’re learning all the time because we’re a new group at this level and we’re finding out what we need to get better at. We’ re looking at the games very closely and saying ‘well, we need to get better at that and we need to improve on this...’.”

The games are coming thick and fast but Mellon rejected the suggestion that some of his players will need rested on Saturday.

"No, not really,” he said. “I think you have to be tough these days. I don’t think we play an unbelievable amount of games like they do in England. We need to be robust and tough and ready; they’re all fit boys and they’re ready to go again next game.”