EL BAKHTAOUI SHOWS HE CAN CUT IT IN THE TOP FLIGHT:
El Bakhtaoui shows he can cut it in the top flight as Dundee end year on a high
IN THE last knockings of an old year, a certain weariness is inevitable. For some, this winter shutdown hasn’t come a minute too soon. Yet there are teams in Scotland positively roaring into 2017, eager for their enforced three-week hiatus to be over. If Dundee aren’t quite vaulting over opponents in order to get to the next challenge, they can certainly feel better about themselves after putting together an unbeaten sequence of five games unbeaten at home.
Utterly ruthless in their 3-0 dismantling of St Johnstone in Saturday’s Tayside derby, Paul Hartley’s men have now scored six in their last two outings at Dens Park. They are virtually unrecognisable from the mob who put together a ten-game winless streak at the start of the campaign.
Hartley has done a lot of hard work with his men over the past couple of months, tweaking formations and drilling the squad to a point where they should know their jobs inside out. In the cases of some individuals within the group, all it has taken is time and a little patience for the manager to see some payback.
Singling out Faissal El Bakhtaoui, scorer of Dundee’s opener after just 15 minutes, Hartley noted that the forward — deployed in a wide role at the weekend — had jumped two divisions when he signed from then League One side Dunfermline last summer.
‘I’m particularly pleased for Faissal because I don’t think it’s been easy for him,’ said the manager. ‘Coming from Dunfermline, he’d scored a lot of goals, so there were expectations — but he jumped two whole leagues. We’ve had to be patient. It’s paying off.’
The Moroccan forward, still just 24, confessed to being pleased simply to have reclaimed a place in the starting XI, admitting: ‘It isn’t easy when you are a new person coming into a club.
‘It is a bit difficult to adapt to the team. I still think I need more time and to work even harder in training, to show the manager that I should be in the team. When I get a chance I have to prove to the manager that I can do something.
‘It is a big step up from League One to the Premiership. It is not the same level and I am playing against better players now. However, if I keep working hard, I think I can play at this level.
‘Every day in training, the manager tells us to concentrate, work hard — and that’s what we have done at home. So it was good to get another win and a clean sheet as well.’
El Bakhtaoui’s opener was a peach of a finish at the near post, rounding off a superb break led by Paul McGowan and then Marcus Haber.
Dundee went two up just before half-time, Kostadin Gadzhalov lashing the ball high into the net from a Haber knock-down, while Steven Anderson’s own goal — an unlucky failed attempt to intercept a Tom Hateley cross after Paul Paton had been robbed of possession by Mark O’Hara — effectively settled the contest.
Despite St Johnstone boss Tommy Wright insisting that his team had turned in one of their best away performances of the season, if only you don’t count the howling defensive lapses, the visitors looked dog tired.
Handed six fixtures in December, they had remained unbeaten in five — until they just ran out of steam, mentally and physically, in Dundee.
Striker Steven MacLean refused to lean on fatigue as an explanation, insisting: ‘You can use that excuse — but we are full-time footballers and we won’t do that.
‘It is a big derby game and we brought a lot of fans through. We have let them down with the result.
‘We have given them plenty of good times and we will be back. It is a setback but we will have a rest and return stronger than ever.
‘To be fair, we have been good this month and have got away from conceding sloppy goals. But against Dundee, that’s three bad goals we have lost.
‘We had lots of possession but our decision making in the final third let us down. But if you lose goals like that, you are not going to win football matches.’