Gritty Utd Tangerines battle hard for a share of the spoils in clash with Hibees

PLAYERRATINGS

THERE are good draws and bad draws. Already this season Dundee United have had a couple of the latter, namely when they were held at home by Queen of the South and Raith Rovers.

But yesterday lunchtime’s share of the spoils at Championship favourites Hibs most definitely fell in the former category.

Not only did they prevent the Hibees returning to the top of the table, it kept the gap between t hem and t he Tangerines to a manageable five points.

More than that, it saw Ray McKinnon’s United show a resilience and determination that’s been lacking in Tannadice teams for a couple of years.

For the point, William Edjenguele’s second-half header from an excellent Scott Fraser corner was not reward for the kind of scintillating football of which we all know United are capable.

Let’s not kid ourselves. For large chunks of the 90 minutes this was a gritty rearguard action.

Not pretty and certainly not packed with the kind of attractive football Arabs love to see from their team.

But in tough leagues like this one, at times circumstances will dictate — and yesterday they did — results have to be earned through a team’s battling qualities. And for United, right now is such a time.

Not only does this remain a side that’s a work in progress, injuries saw McKinnon go into the game with depleted resources.

Fitness issues meant he was denied the services of his dogs of war Willo Flood and Stewart Murdoch, men who are worth their weight in gold in difficult away fixtures.

Their absence meant the manager had to shuffle his pack, playing some men in positions they’d prefer not to and asking others to perform ugly tasks that are alien to their style of play.

The good news was at Easter Road these players did what was asked of them and performed to a standard that could leave them arguing they were well worth their point.

Yes Hibs dominated possession and yes they’ll feel they did enough attacking to say this was a game they could have won.

Fact was, though, that until an injury-time shot from home scorer James Keatings, Cammy Bell in the United goal was not called on to perform anything approaching heroics.

It should be said that save from Keatings’ angled drive was exceptional but everything else that came Bell’s way, you would have expected a goalie of his stature to deal with.

He did and the defence in front of him deserves credit for limiting the number of direct efforts on goal from dangerous positions to no more than a handful.

Of course, no one should be going OTT about this result.

United have now played all four early-season pace-setters in their division and have not beaten any of them. To win automatic promotion, that’s a statistic that will have to be improved.

But, as this team gels and players return to fitness, there has to be good reason to believe that can happen.

It should also be said Keatings’ opener 12 minutes before the interval saw the team carved open too easily and the scorer given too much room in the penalty box to pick his spot.

But overall — while this was not a pretty performance — it was a day of more positives than negatives.