You can’t blink first as push comes to shove
Jack insists United will stay calm in title fight
JACK WALTON knows what it takes to win promotion and he believes that Dundee United have it in spades.
The Tannadice side were heavy favourites this season to make an immediate return to the Premiership but are being pushed all the way by Raith.
keeper Walton was part of the Barnsley squad that got promoted to the english championship in 2019 and wants to make it a double with title-chasing united.
He said: “The key lesson is that it is a very long season, there are loads of ups and some downs. you just have to trust in the process.
“The season starts in august and it finishes in may. it is not about individual games or individual months, it is what you do over the course of nine or 10 months and 99 per cent of the time, the best team will get promoted.
“so we just have to make sure we stick to what we believe in and the way we do stuff. We need to work hard every single day, do everything right on and off the pitch.
“if you can do all that, most of the time you will get your rewards at the end of the season.”
While Raith are breathing down their necks, Walton is confident that united can win their remaining games, starting with today’s trip to face Partick Thistle.
He said: “Raith have been with us and it has ebbed and flowed. We always knew there was going to be a title race between the two of us, but we just have to concentrate on ourselves.
“We have a really good team and we are capable of winning every game if we turn up.”
The united camp is still raw from their defeat to airdrie but Walton expects that to fire them up for Thistle.
He said: “We can’t dwell on it too much but instead prepare for another tough game on saturday and get back to winning ways.
“We will take criticism from Tuesday as we know it wasn’t good enough, but we also need to look at the bigger picture.
“We are at a crunch time of the season now – the run-in – and we know exactly what we need to do.
“The main thing is probably calmness. obviously we have had a couple of defeats in the last three games.
“We know areas where we can improve. We know going into the last 11 games we possibly need to tweak a few things and get back on a winning run.”
But he knows united’s title credentials will be tested by their next two games, away to promotion rivals Thistle and morton. He claimed: “i look at the fixtures and think, ‘That’s not an easy game’. That’s not just up here, that’s football in general.”
Firhill boss kris Doolan has ordered his side to tighten up at the back if they are to hold on to third spot.
Tuesday’s 4-3 defeat to ayr was the fourth game in a row Jags have shipped three or more as they’ve seen their cushion in third cut to a solitary point.
He said: “We did so much to get back into the game and once you do get back into it, it was a sore one to take.
“We don’t want to allow ourselves to always have to pull ourselves back, that’s the takeaway from it.
“We want to start better and stop giving away cheap goals – if teams have to work a lot harder to score, then we would be in a far better place.
“it is more about teams having to play in a manner that is difficult to find their way to our goal – because we have to work so hard to score the goals that we do. our forwards certainly work their socks off.”