Johnston calls on Pars to cash in on Tangerines’ woes

Allan Johnston has urged Dunfermline to deepen Dundee United’s woes this weekend by climbing above them in the Championship.

The Pars have boosted their own promotion dreams by taking seven points from their last three games and are now just a point adrift of fourth-placed Morton.

A victory over United at Tannadice tomorrow would ensure they jumped over their hosts, who have three games in hand but could drop as low as sixth if both Morton and Queen of the South also secure wins.

United were booed off when they suffered a third straight home game without a victory in Tuesday’s 3-2 defeat to Queen of the South.

And Dunfermline are hoping to take advantage if the Tangerines’ struggles continue tomorrow.

Johnston, whose side have taken just a point from three games against United so far this season, said: “To be fair to them, they’ve got a lot of good players, a lot of guys who have played at a really good level, some top players.

“But we’re due a result against Dundee United. We’ve had a lot of good performances, but it’s time we started turning the decent performances into wins.

“So, we’re going there to try to get the three points and to get ahead of them in the table. There’s not much more of an incentive than that.

“They’ve got a lot of games in hand but you can see how hard it is to win games in this division. So, we’ve just got to focus on ourselves and get as many wins as we can between now and the end of the season.

“You can see everybody’s vying for those couple of play-off places that are left and we want to make sure we’re there come the end of the season.”

United have boosted their ranks in recent days with the capture of Celtic defender Anthony Ralston on an emergency loan and former Rangers defender Bilel Mohsni on a short-term contract.

Manager Csaba Laszlo has chopped and changed his starting line-up in a bid to find a winning formula amid a hectic run of fixtures.

However, Johnston, who has named the same team for the last three games, believes the alterations could lead to an uncertainty in the United ranks.

He added: “They’ve changed their team about a fair bit. There’s been a lot of changes, a couple of changes every week.

“I see they’ve signed Mohsni as well and Ralston played in the last game.

“There have been a lot of boys coming in, new players and maybe boys who haven’t been playing every week.

“That’s difficult sometimes and we’ve got to try to take advantage of that.

“I’m sure after their result this week they’ll be looking to make changes again, so hopefully we can be on the front foot and get the points we need.”