Time for Dee to man up says boss

DUNDEE boss Neil McCann says it’s time for his young guns to “become men” after they fell to a fourth straight defeat and, with it, dropped to the foot of the Premiership table.

Gaffer Neil acknowledges it’s up to him to keep heads up i n t he dressing-room and is gearing up for some hard graft to try to break his side out of their losing streak.

On Saturday, Ioannis Skondras and David Templeton goals either side of the break gave Hamilton a 2-0 lead at Dens before A-Jay Leitch-Smith halved the deficit from the spot.

The Dark Blues, though, couldn’t force an equaliser despite Massimo Donati’s red card and a poor day was capped by Antonio Rojano’s late strike.

Dundee’s side is a young one with players like Glen Kamara, Jack Hendry, Jesse Curran, Lewis Spence and Kerr Waddell who started on Saturday all aged 22 or under.

And Neil says it’s times like this when things aren’t going right for young players to grow up and show their mettle.

He said: “We’ve got a young group and this is where they become men.

“It’s difficult but I’m not going to roll over, we get back to work and put in some real serious work to try to become harder to beat.

“This is when you need to use man-management to gather the boys and make sure they become stronger characters.

“Our game has been really attractive to watch without getting results but we need to do the ugly side of the game as well.

“We maybe lacked that edge that you need to be hard to beat and it’s up to me to try to find that with them.”

The defeat finished off a punishing week where Dundee picked up no points from three winnable matches.

With Kilmarnock picking up a point at Celtic Park, that saw the Dark Blues drop to bottom spot on goal difference behind Steve Clarke’s side.

“I’m aware of the league table,” Neil added.

“I don’t like being down there at the bottom of the table, I’m trying to change things here where we’re not looking down at the bottom.

“All the other teams that have moved above us have gone through a difficult period — we’re experienced one now.

“The only way out of that is to work really hard on the training ground on different things, try to get the boys to be brave and still believe in what we’re doing.”

Left-sided defender Kevin Holt missed the game after feeling unwell.

Dundee kid Kerr Waddell and his fellow youngsters need to stand up and be counted as the Dark Blues fight at the bottom of the Premiership.