Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
McGhee: Dee will away after their
DUNDEE’S Jordan McGhee insists there will be no getting carried away at Dens Park after the Dark Blues ignited their season with a 3-1 victory over league leaders Hearts.
The Dens men were slow off the mark in the Championship, being thumped 6-2 on the opening day by the Jambos and falling eight points behind their weekend opponents in the title race.
However, McGhee insists the Dundee have turned the corner on their season and, at the same time, taken some of the pain away from that poor day at Tynecastle.
Now he’s keen to see his side push on and try to cut the gap to the top even further.
McGhee said: “The 6-2 was a bitter pill to swallow and it still hurts.
“But this win takes a little bit of the edge off.
“We won’t get carried away. It is a big result for us but there are still a lot of games and we just have to keep trying to churn out three points every week.
“Saturday was a great performance and it has been a long time coming as well, so we are delighted.
“Obviously we knew Hearts would be tough opponents but we have done really well in the last six games and we knew if we played the way we have been playing and doing the right things we could get a decent result – I think we did that.”
There was a hunger about Dundee that’s not always been present this season, particularly in a first half that saw them get after
Hearts and chalk up a 2-0 lead at the break.
That desire was epitomised by a tackle from Shaun Byrne in the opening minutes on Steven Naismith that earned a yellow card for the Dens midfielder.
Jambos boss Robbie Neilson felt it should have been a red card but McGhee insists the challenge fired up the Dark Blues and “set the tone” for the performance.
He said: “It happens a lot in this league – teams try to do it to us as well.
“It is part and parcel of the game and you see it all over the world, players trying to set the tone in the first five minutes.
“There is no better way to do that and if the fans were in here it would have got every single one of them on their feet. So it was definitely a marker set.”
McGhee himself set his own marker by grabbing the opening goal of the game as he continues to enjoy his new lease of life as a box-to-box midfielder.
After enduring a spell of poor form in his usual defensive role at the start of the season, McGhee has emerged as a driving force in the middle of the park since returning to the team last month.
He netted against Inverness and added his second of the season after 14 minutes on Saturday, planting a fine header into the top corner from a superb Charlie Adam cross.
The former Hearts man was delighted to set his team on the way to victory.
“It was a great ball from Charlie,” he said.
“I have been making those runs and the gaffer has been on at me to