DUNDEE DREAM OF DEMOLITION DERBY
Hartley’s Dark Blues out to tip neighbours into the abyss
DUNDEE know how it feels to live in the shadow of flash neighbours. Dundee United won two League Cups and their only Premier League title at Dens Park. Tip-toeing silently into the night in stocking feet was never an option.
The winning was never enough. It was important to win loudly; for their neighbours to hear every party and suffer.
And suffer Dundee did. Through two administrations, a raft of dodgy owners, and some dark, bleak years.
The Dark Blues have waited a long time for this. For the chance to call themselves the stable, established football club in Dundee. Few of us can remember the last time it happened.
‘The potential is there for us to relegate Dundee United,’ said manager Paul Hartley. ‘They will know that they have to win.
‘They really need to win every game until the end of the season if they want to have any chance of staying in the division.
‘But our motivation is to do well for our supporters. We want to put on a good performance and we want to stay unbeaten in the derbies this season.
‘That’s not happened for a long time and we want to be the best team in the city.’
The Tayside derby will be a loss to Scottish football. A fixture with edge and box-office appeal in a league with precious few alternatives. Hartley admits the city will miss both the profile and the revenue the game provides.
Yet he is under no illusions that everyone feels the same. Dundee supporters want United relegated. Finances are secondary to schadenfreude. The plan is for years of taunts and abuse to be repaid now with interest.
United’s civil war has become a joyous affair. Chairman and largest shareholder Stephen Thompson has alienated supporters to the point where they want him gone. The reasons for his sister Justine’s departure from the board, meanwhile, remain a closely guarded secret.
The ignominy of going down at Dens Park would be almost unbearable. United manager Mixu Paatelainen would surely lose his job and Thompson’s quest to seek investment to save his own skin would take on a new urgency. The inquest will be long and bitter.
Yet, as Hartley points out, there has been an inevitability to their relegation for months. Dundee will not relegate United on Monday. They relegated themselves some time ago.
‘I think we realise what can happen,’ he said. ‘But it is not this game that can potentially relegate United, it is the whole season.
‘Obviously it is a derby match that might relegate them but all our focus is just on winning.
‘Will the derbies be a loss? I think players enjoy taking part in these games and, as a manager, I enjoy these occasions also. I think they will be a loss to the city, as well as the top flight. We need to keep our top teams in the league and make it as strong as we can.
‘On the other hand, our fans will look at it in a good way and we can be the top team in the city.’
Take petty, tribal rivalries out of the equation and United’s relegation is a minor disaster for the Scottish Premiership.
A club with an infrastructure and support geared towards top-tier football, their relegation will prompt little or no sympathy amongst rival supporters.
Selling the club’s best players while obsessing over a half-baked scheme to purchase a club in Australia, Thompson’s mismanagement is an undeniable factor in their demise.
Yet the bigger picture shows that the day when the Premiership has a full set of big city ‘names’ back in the mix is still some distance away. Even if Hibs find a way up via the play-offs.
‘If you look at Rangers coming into the league, they bring a large travelling support,’ stated the Dens Park boss.
‘So if United go down, we will still have a massive team coming into the league.
‘You want to try to make the league as strong as possible and really attractive. You want your top teams in and you want to pit your wits against them.
‘But it has to be on merit and if you are good enough to stay in the league, then so be it — if you are not and you haven’t won enough games, then you go down. Teams only have themselves to blame.’
In a pre-season poll Dundee — and not their neighbours — would have been rated likelier to go down. While United made some disastrous — now invisible — acquisitions, however, Hartley built a solid unit.
Forwards Kane Hemmings and Greg Stewart feature on a fourman shortlist for PFA Scotland Player of the Year. Unexpectedly, silently, the baton has been passed from one city club to the other.
‘If you look at it over the years, they have finished high up in the league and gone to cup finals,’ added Hartley. ‘So, they have had a disastrous season, to be quite honest with you.’
In contrast, Dundee can be satisfied with where they stand. The failure to reach the top six was a mild disappointment which, in the eyes of fans, would be generously offset by establishing themselves as the best team in the City of Discovery.
‘We are trying to build a team here,’ explained Hartley. ‘We were out of the league long enough over the years and we know what it is like — it is not nice.
‘We have managed to stay in the top flight the first two seasons we have been back. It is good for the club and the fans as we have had enough over the years being really unstable.
‘We’ve had two administrations — the club has been in turmoil. We have needed our fans to save the club, so I definitely think things are changing.
‘We have a good team on the pitch and that has been recognised in the PFA Player-ofthe-Year awards.
‘So, we are trying to build a team here and the club for years to come — be really, really stable, trying to challenge as best we can.’