HARTLEY BUOYED BY NARROW LOSS
PAUL HARTLEY expressed his hope that restricting Celtic to one goal will point the way to an improvement in Dundee’s fortunes.
The 1-0 loss extended their winless league streak to seven, but Hartley saw positives from a loss that saw them 10th in the league.
That is a position Hartley will seek to address with yesterday’s three-man defence set to feature in the weeks ahead.
Against Celtic, that was pinned back to a five and they performed to Hartley’s satisfaction, only being breached by Scott Brown two minutes after the interval.
He said: ‘I was pleased with the players. We needed a big performance, a big reaction from last week.
‘I felt we were good. Our organisation and discipline were good. They never really cut us open.
‘They had a lot of possession, but they’ve been beating teams scoring five and six. No one gave us a chance but I felt we were always in the game.
‘We’ve got to be like that until the end of the season. We changed the shape and felt comfortable. We don’t want to bamboozle the players too much, so we’re going to try and stick with this.’
Hartley is sorely missing the goals of Kane Hemmings and Greg Stewart and he admits there are no fixes on the free-agent market at present.
He admitted: ‘We’ve got to try and find goals from somewhere, but I’ve got faith in the players we have.
‘There’s nothing else out there, so we’ll go with what we’ve got. Hopefully, it’s enough until January.’