United fought for their victory yesterday. The team showed the type of fighting spirit that the Arabs have been crying out for all season, but have only been shown in glimpses.
United hassled and hurried a decent and in-form Hibs side, who before yesterday’s game were still being talked about as possible title contenders. We may have ridden our luck in places, and had both sides taken all the decent chances the game presented, it could have easily been three-a-piece. But such is football – Hibs will play worse this season and win, and United will gratefully take the three points without dissecting the performance too much.
Some of our rivals dropped points also, which meant a shift up to ninth from tenth.
It was, to some extent, a satisfying display from the Terrors, and one wonders why some weeks we look like we’d rather be elsewhere, why we defend so badly, why we seem unwilling to run at other teams? None of this was in evidence yesterday. We were outplayed on occasions, but generally held our own, and controlled for long spells also. It is mystifying how we go from one extreme to the other. This Arab thinks it’s psychological preparation – not being in the right frame of mind building up to the game. Of course this is only true if the fitness and skill levels are up to speed, but our attitude is, yesterday excepted, shocking sometimes.
Colin Samuel seems to provide a danger we didn’t have before – and that’s someone who is willing to run at the opposition. We really need to be doing this more often. Got the ball? Get up the park! Sweep forward! Quickly!!
Our defence seems to have toughened up and sharpened up a little, but we were still caught sleeping once or twice. It will take a long period of sustained improvement before I’m convinced that we have finally turned a corner into being a side with the correct attitude, solidity, and will to win. We have two very vital and massive games coming up – against the two teams below us Livi and Dunfermline. If we have the correct ‘go at thum’ attitude we can’t fail. If we relax back into slack defending and long hopeful (hopeless) balls forward again, we’re doomed. It’s up to us to almost, if you like, ‘beat ourselves’ !! Six points are possible, but only if we show the right attitude, from before the games have even started.
Another thing I’d like to see is us not thinking that when we score, the next logical step is to defend. Again, this, in my opinion, is a fault in attitude. Get the ball and KEEP getting up the park as we had been doing before we scored! I’m not saying all-out attack for the full 90 minutes, but we straight away sit deep after scoring, which has recently proved very costly with losing leads against ICT and Motherwell, both within minutes of scoring ourselves.
Again I think this is a mental problem from us that I hope Chisholm can and will address.