Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Dundee won’t at Rugby Park
THERE will be no going to Kilmarnock tomorrow and shutting up shop for Dundee, according to Tom Hateley. They are going there for one thing — victory.
After finally putting an end to their run of seven straight defeats with a 3-2 win at Motherwell last week, the Dark Blues face another testing away trip this weekend.
Many would see a point as a good return for Dundee against Lee McCulloch’s men but Hateley insists his side have the talent to go there and get a vital three points.
He said: “I’ve said all season, we’ve got the players and the squad to go anywhere and win games — we’re not looking to go away to get a point and shut up shop.
“The players who have that bit of magic like Craig Wighton, Faissal El Bakhtaoui, Henrik Ojamaa, Marcus Haber with his goals — we’ve got matchwinners in our team and we’re going anywhere to win a game of football.
“We’re going to Killie for the victory, 100%. So if we can get two away wins in a row and put ourselves in a good spot going into the last few games then that’d be perfect.”
Since interim manager Neil McCann took the reins at Dens Park, the mood around the place has been all about positivity.
More important for Hateley, though, was putting an end to that miserable run of defeats at Motherwell.
“It’s been the reaction the manager would have wanted,” Hateley added.
“Everybody wants to impress and stay in the team.
“The boys who started last week have been training just as hard this week to keep their place.
“There’s been a bounce in training simply from the result last week.
“It was a tough old run we were on. You try to think of ways of how you’re going to get out of it.
“Last Saturday was a big game for us at Motherwell, everybody knew we needed to win that game.
“We went there with a plan to win and the gaffer set out a gameplan and we’d worked hard all week on exactly how we’d wanted to play.
“Luckily for us, the hard work paid off and that bad run came to an end.
“This is the business end of the season, we need to maintain the momentum and get another good