CAN UNITED BOUNCE BACK?
History suggests the team which goes down takes a while to come up. With their ‘abysmal’ side now in freefall...
IT’S surely impossible to imagine a greater misnomer in football at this moment in t i me t han Dundee United. A flat, seemingly-resigned playing squad that is 13 points adrift and hurtling towards the trap door. An incandescent chairman accusing them of being ‘abysmal’. A manager who has succeeded in making a desperate situation worse. A fanbase that’s now on the brink of mutiny.
Not a year since appearing in a major cup final, internecine warfare has taken grip at Tannadice. If the purpose of chairman Stephen Thompson’s caustic statement on Wednesday was to get a reaction, give him credit where it’s due. He got that all right.
Time will tell if the ball of fire he launched under his misfiring squad stands any chance of sparking the most unlikely of comebacks. For most observers, the dying embers of United’s survival fight were stamped out by Motherwell on Tuesday night in an abject 3-0 home defeat.
So what happens next? Firstly, Mixu Paatelainen f aces the media this morning at the club’s St Andrews training base and the Finn needn’t anticipate t oo many questions pertaining to tomorrow’s home match with Hearts.
For all you had to at least admire the honesty and passion of Thompson’s words, his statement did cross the demarcation l i ne that separates boardroom from bootroom.
In telling the squad they had ‘13 matches to preserve the club’s Premiership status and redeem their own professional reputations’, Thompson put the length of the silvery Tay between himself and the players. Perhaps some things are better left unsaid.
It begs a question: Did Paatelainen know about the statement in advance and did he sanction it? If the answer to that is ‘yes’, the Finn is also now on a war footing with the dressing room.
If he was unaware of it or he disagrees with it, where does that leave his relationship with the man who hired him on a three-year contract last October? His position would surely be untenable.
Speaking on the BBC, former United defender Mark Wilson said: ‘I wouldn’t think that’s the best way of inspiring a team to go on some sort of miracle run to get them up the table.
‘ You’d think it would go the opposite way; the chairman saying they’ve got 13 games to save their professional careers.
‘I would be hurt by the statement. You expect criticism and public criticism, probably from your manager.
‘But it’s slightly strange when it comes from the chairman. I’m sure the players are under no illusions of where they are at the minute and what they’ve done to deserve to be there.
‘They have got to realise that, at a time like this, the chairman has every right to come out and criticise them.’
We’ve been here already this year, of course. In January, the day after Thompson blamed last summer’s recruitment (by Jackie McNamara) for the slump, Paatelainen came out batting for his paymaster, saying the criticism had been mild compared with the verbal lashings Jim McLean used to mete out.
He may have had a point but the blunt reality is that, since that date, his side has won just one league game. That doesn’t exactly suggest that the dressing room bought his argument hook, line and sinker.
On the evidence of their no-show in what was a must-win game on Tuesday, you might conclude that they just aren’t listening or no longer care.
We’ll know, for sure, by time up on Saturday i f United are an honest bunch who don’t have the tools or whether they have simply downed them altogether.
Fighting talk comes cheaply and, no matter how inevitable their demotion looks to the rest of us, rest assured they will top the l e ague f or s pouting empty platitudes between now and May.
Back on planet Earth, however, a team that has won just three league games from 25 needs to win five out of its next 13 just to get back into the running. And that’s with no one above them gaining a point. Shergar looks to have more hope of winning the Derby.
While you wouldn’t expect anyone within a once proud club to give it up without a fight, it would be remiss of all at Tannadice if they were not now privately gearing up for life in the Championship.
Put frankly, this could be just the start of the club’s problems. With no relegation clauses in any of the players’ contracts, the financial i mpact of going down to the second tier will be enormous.
While Championship clubs are distinctly better off than before the amalgamation of the SPFL and the SFL in 2013, it’s United’s inability to cut their cloth accordingly that must be giving Thompson and the rest of his board sleepless nights.
Blair Spittal, t he versatile midfielder, might well be sold for a reasonable fee, while Ryan Dow, a talented forward, is on his way to St Johnstone.
Beyond that, Paatelainen appears to be stuck with what got him into this jam, with Thompson footing a wage bill the club can ill-afford.
If they can’t get themselves up for a do-or-die game with Motherwell, how will they fair next season at Dumbarton’s one- stand wind tunnel or against likely League One winners Dunfermline?
WHEN United were last relegated in 1995 — one year after winning the Scottish Cup — they only scraped promotion via the play-offs by controversially seeing off Partick Thistle. It’s hard to see this beleaguered squad leading from the front.
It goes without saying that Paatelainen’s position would firstly come into question. While United sources were insisting this week that the manager is under no immediate threat, it’s hard to imagine how he could be viewed as the right man to turn this stricken tanker around.
That McNamara made mistakes last summer is beyond all reasonable doubt. But, when his successor was announced, United were just one point behind Partick Thistle and five behind 10th-placed Kilmarnock.
Not only has there been no bounce but things have got significantly worse and you have to now question the wisdom of Paatelainen — just 11 days after taking charge — publicly flaying his players by asking: ‘What’s the point in f****** training?’ after shipping five to Celtic.
While public opinion has slowly turned against the affable Finn, for the majority of United fans, the man who employs him remains the main target of their anger.
In one sense, this growing resentment of Thompson on the basis of the player exodus from the club seems unfair.
As hard as it was for the rank and file to swallow, what were the United board to do when Sporting Lisbon came calling for Ryan Gauld, Hull City f or Andrew Robertson and Celtic for Gary Mackay-Steven, Stuart Armstrong and Nadir Ciftci?
United need to sell a player a year to balance the books. For so many to depart so soon was wounding for the football department but it would have been a dereliction of duty for Thompson to have told those suitors where to go.
Where United and their chairman have fallen down — and badly at that — is recruitment. Ross County lost their first seven games last season and, having replaced Derek Adams with Jim McIntyre, brought in the likes of Craig Curran and Marcus Fraser. They finished ninth.
United began the season without an experienced goalkeeper, while Rodney Sneijder returned to Holland after just one game.
McNamara paid the price for those aberrations with his job but Florent Sinama Pongolle and Riku Riski, just two of the subsequent additions, have been equally as feckless.
Pongolle, of course, will always be able to dine out on the goal he once scored for Liverpool against Olympiakos on the road to 2005 Champions League glory.
Ever since that moment, his career has been heading south. In that sense, United has been the perfect fit.