GOING NOWHERE
A tale of two halves leaves United’s bid for promotion in the balance
FOR considerable spells of this match, Dundee United simply did not look like a team anywhere near resilient enough to make it out of this fiercely competitive division and back into the Premiership at the first time of asking.
From being a goal up through Simon Murray in the initial stages, they showed some dreadful levels of concentration in the first half and coughed up a cheap leveller to Stephen Dobbie.
After the break, it was something else altogether.
They were flatlining on the park. Goals from Joe Thomson and Dom Thomas looked like consigning them to their third straight defeat in the immediate aftermath of a visit to league leaders Hibernian in which they never really turned up.
Queen of the South had chances to extend their lead, too, before the substitutes introduced to the play had the desired effect and jolted United out of their catatonic state — helping seize a point through a Scott Fraser effort and an 89th-minute leveller from Murray.
As it is, they are now six points behind Hibs. Indeed, Morton can creep to within two points of them should they win their game in hand.
Where they still have a chance is that there is no attempt to sugarcoat these failings from their admirably candid manager Ray McKinnon.
He knows how deeply concerning this performance was at times, but this was a team cobbled together in no time at all over the summer and they have a boss clearly willing to confront them over what appear to be some real, psychological frailties.
‘We gave ourselves a mountain to climb at 3-1 and, at that point, I didn’t see us getting a point because I didn’t think we were at the races mentally until Charlie Telfer, Blair Spittal and Tope Obadeyi came on to give us that spark,’ said McKinnon.
‘This is a test of character. The guys have got to show a bit more than they have in the last couple of games.
‘For 25 minutes of that second half, they looked a bit lost. They were looking for a leader, for someone else to take up the mantle and lead the way.
‘We put this team together in six weeks, though, and I think they are high-achieving. I don’t know if they are feeling sorry for themselves on the back of a couple of defeats, but they will come back from this.’
Certainly, everything was set up for a morale-boosting victory after Murray had collected a pass over the top from Fraser, touched the ball inside to take Andy Dowie out of the game and lashed it high past keeper Lee Robinson.
The alarm bells started ringing on 12 minutes when Lewis Toshney was short with an attempt to head the ball back to Cammy Bell.
John Rankin nipped in and it took some good work from Bell to block his attempted lob.
Yet, just before the half-hour mark, the scorelines were level.
A Scott Mercer free-kick broke off Danny Carmichael inside the area. He may claim that teeing up Dobbie was intentional. It did not really look like it. Even so, Queens’ main man showed exactly why he now boasts 18 goals in 26 appearances, getting the ball under control and quickly dispatching it into the far corner.
Murray was denied by a quite brilliant save from Robinson on 39 minutes, his curling effort clawed on to the far post at full stretch. Robinson then denied Tony Andreu with another good stop.
With the second half just settling down, though, the problems really started for the home side. Dobbie played a super little pass to release Thomson on the right. For a moment, he seemed to have lost control and lost his chance.
However, Mark Durnan failed to deal with the situation and permitted the on-loan Celtic player to adjust and release a shot, which zipped through Bell’s legs and hit the back of the net.
By the time Thomas made it 3-1, United were, quite frankly, all over the shop.
The on-loan Motherwell player picked up the ball on the right, skipped inside past William Edjenguele and released a powerful left-footed effort which beat Bell all ends up in the postage-stamp corner.
The game was sliding out of United’s grasp until Fraser delivered a lifeline. A cross from substitute Spittal was kept in play by Toshney and an attempted clearance from Jordan Marshall fell perfectly to Fraser, who beat Robinson to his left with a low effort from the edge of the penalty area.
With time running out, Murray pounced again. Obadeyi delivered a low cross to the back post and the flame-haired forward forced home his 11th goal of the season from close range.
United had thrown centre-half Durnan up front by that stage and, two minutes into stoppage-time, he got his head to a good cross from Willo Flood. It looked his effort might loop in. Robinson, however, proved his equal.
‘At any level, you should win if you are 3-1 up,’ said visiting manager Gary Naysmith.
‘I went through every emotion you can imagine, but would have felt worse if Lee had not made that save in the last minute.’