NO TIME FOR MOPING, INSISTS REYNOLDS

DUNDEE UNITED captain Mark Reynolds has told his team-mates they can’t afford to lick their wounds after failing to engineer a route back to the Premiership. Robbie Neilson’s side now face a fourth successive campaign in the Championship and Reynolds says they need to concentrate on how to get promotion rather than focus on this term’s failure. City rivals Dundee’s relegation means there will be the consolation of a Tayside derby in the Championship but Reynolds prefers to look at the bigger picture instead of the local rivalry. ‘There’s an added spice with Dundee there next year,’ he said. ‘But we want to finish in front of everybody, not just Dundee. We want to dominate so we go up automatically. ‘I think if we had this squad at the start of the season we would probably have been promoted automatically. ‘But we just didn’t have enough time from January to close the gap on Ross County.’ Reynolds was also scathing of the play-off process, citing it as part of the reason for United’s woeful performance in the penalty shoot-out which decided their fate. ‘We got through the play-offs and I don’t know who designed them but it certainly wasn’t a footballer,’ he said. ‘You end up playing all sorts of games jammed into the end of the season with two days between games and the second game going on for 120 minutes. ‘You could see at the end that the boys were tired. It was a big game, there was a lot riding on it and it wasn’t a great spectacle and obviously we came off worst. ‘It would be easy to say that contributed to the penalty misses, I don’t know, but I think fatigue was certainly a factor. ‘We’ve been pushing all season for promotion and St Mirren have been fighting for their lives for the last six games. ‘Then you’re asking these guys to come into a showpiece and stretch it over two matches. ‘I don’t know why it can’t be done in one game.’