UNITED START SEASON WITH A DRAW

12404 people packed into the stadium to give the game the atmosphere it merited. This is the opening day of the season – the two clubs had been battling for various players’ signatures for a large part of the summer – namely Lee Miller – and it was Miller who opened the scoring for United on seven minutes. A Mark Wilson corner was almost found by McCracken but it fell for Miller who turned expertly and fired the ball into the corner of the net – silencing the Sheep faithful who had booed him every time he touched the ball. They stopped on seven minutes.

United continued to play well, and be on top until about 30 minutes when Aberdeen started to creep into the game a little more. United eased off a little too, and I personally feel an all-out attacking style is the only way to finish these teams off. Fair enough if we are 3-0 up – but we seem to slack off at 1-0, like the job has been done, and so many times we are taught that it isn’t. Not wanting to hark back to last season, eventful thought I was – but how many times did we lose leads? Too often. Attack. Score. Attack again. Score again. Simple! Not - attack. Score. Slack aff fer a wee while!! This isn’t knocking the effort of the players, nor our tactics – it’s more like a belief thing from the team – ‘this is how we do it’. It’s not how you do it – you score again, and again, and again. Only when we are 16-0 up, and in jury time, in a friendly, may the players slack off!! We also looked tired towards the end. If you just had the summer off, done yer pre-season training and friendlies – surely you could manage one game of football for 90 minutes? We have a very promising squad and I like our management and boardroom people too – but we need to be fitter on the park and we need to attack no matter what the score (barring obvious exceptions like being 1-0 with a MINUTE to go).

None of the players had a bad game thankfully, and the defence looked as solid as the end of last season, which is good to see, though special mentions to Stillie and Miller, who both played well and of course Miller scored.

All in all not a bad start and we showed signs of strong promise. Let’s hope we can iron out our hesitancy and take the game to these teams.

Our next five games are; away to Celtic, away in Finland in the UEFA, home to Hearts, Fir Park, then the UEFA home tie, and we are capable of doing something in all of these games, if we are fitter and more willing to get forward more quickly.