Furious Jim blasts his County flops
RAGING Jim McIntyre last night blasted his Ross County flops for slumping to an “embarrassing” Scottish Cup defeat against 10-man Dundee United.
With just half-an-hour of yesterday’s quarter-final clash to go, the Staggies were 2-1 up and a man to the good on the Premiership basement boys.
But goals from Henry Anier and Billy McKay – both of which came from crosses – undid the Highlanders, who now face a battle to lift themselves before next weekend’s League Cup Final clash with Hibs.
McIntyre said: “We got ourselves in a great position and we’ve thrown it away.
“You’ve got to give United credit but we’ve allowed three crosses into the box far too easily and basically we didn’t do our jobs.
“A full-back’s job is to stop balls coming into the box – making good decisions.
“I expect with the experience we’ve got that we can handle these situations, but quite clearly it wasn’t good enough on the day.
“That’s three times this season we have been done by 10 men. It’s quite embarrassing, really. We should be better than that.
“We’re sore and it’s going to take a couple of days to get this out of our system and move on to the final.”
Asked whether he was angry over his side’s failure to hold their lead, he said: “Of course I’m angry.
“I’m angry because we have better in that dressing room than we have shown, and we have also blown an opportunity to get to another semi-final.”
United boss Mixu Paatelainen admitted he considered playing for a replay after Brian Graham’s spot-kick left his 10-man side with a mountain to climb.
But his decision to keep the faith with an attack-minded line-up right to the bitter end paid dividends.
“I was thinking about the replay,” said Paatelainen.
“I felt that when we got the equaliser, or before that, I wanted to keep the three strikers up there, because prior to the sending off we were well in the game.
“Once we went a man down, I felt, ‘Let’s keep that going and try to get the equaliser’. When we got it, I did say to Gordon Young: ‘What do you think, at what point do we consolidate?’
“But we just boosted the midfield, put fresh legs there. What a shift from the players, fantastic.”