[Dundee United 23/24]

McMann was our most consistent player all season, but he's out of contract and there will be likely be better alternatives out there.

Surprised at Holt but considering how solid we were in defence I can understand keeping him. Still need to sign another centre back though and you'd hope he'd be of a higher standard and will be a stick on starter.

Cudjoe is likely not on the list so we can get compensation, but equally the likes of Meekison and Mochrie are on the list because we'll just want to help them get on with their careers.

It's all quite exciting thinking about how we could have a refreshed team next season, but there have to be lessons learned from the last season we were there.

[Dundee United 23/24]

46 minutes ago, Tannadeechee said:

That was the issue with the relegated team. It was a.team of talented individuals that somehow managed to be lesser than the sum of its parts.

Happy to have no real "stars" if we can create a real team that compliments each other and can be greater than the sum of their parts.

 

100%

I made a point kinda similar a couple of weeks ago and then never followed up when people questioned it.

If United were to field that same squad as we fielded last night every week in the Premiership, we'd do ok. And I think if that side played against our team that was relegated, they'd win without much of a fuss. It's a good, balanced side. I reckon as well that most of our squad - if they were out of contract and looking for a club - would be picked up by most teams in the league, outwith the top 3.#

But even though we could survive in the league with that side and with other teams always susceptible to implosion, could even do surprisingly well, we still absolutely need to strengthen.

Look at David Wotherspoon as an example; lots of people replying to his farewell tweet wishing he stayed. The guy is a decent player but all we've seen is the occasional good cameo. If given the choice of keeping him on our recruiting a player who is maybe 8-10 years younger who is ready to make the step up, and who wouldn't have wanted to sign for us in the Championship, then we should.

Every player out of contract should be looked at to see if keeping them on is the best thing to do, if there are better alternatives out there. You have to keep some level of consistency in the squad though. One solid player for us this season who I probably wouldn't keep is Kevin Holt. I'd rather see us sign a better defender to partner Graham.

Most importantly though, we have to sign a good goalkeeper. Every time we've been relegated, it's been down to poor recruitment in that department. It's crucial.

[Dundee United 23/24]

8 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Not convinced about Moult at Premiership level and I’d be surprised if Cudjoe has what it takes at that level too.

I’ve been impressed by Sam McLelland.  Not a sniff until injuries forced Goodwin’s hand but has been impressive since being given the opportunity.  Maybe a cheeky wee bid to the Perth club?

I think there's very little difference between a balanced Premiership squad from 4th down compared to what we've got as Championship winners.

If we let Moult go, he would 100% be snapped up by one of our rivals for next season.

McClelland will probably only come back to us if Saints are relegated but I wouldn't be against it.

Oh and to my earlier post we should definitely resign Miller Thomson.

[Dundee United 23/24]

2 hours ago, Dundee Hibernian said:

Happy for Chris Mochrie getting the decisive goal yesterday in a match which didn't like up to expectations, and good to see Archie Meekison rush on to the pitch at the end to congratulate him. Nonetheless, I can't see many opportunities for the pair next season at Tannadice, but hope I'm wrong. 

Big changes on the way, I suspect.

Mochrie is still only 20 so still plenty of time to develop. 

But I suspect you're right about big changes coming. This rumoured investment from down south will likely now be finalised, since everyone knows what league we'll be playing in.

I don't think that should result in a mass turnover of the squad, but some of the players will likely be off.

To my mind, we should keep McMann, Graham, Sibbald, Moult and Mochrie. Holt has been very good, but he's not young and frankly we'll be in a position where we should be looking to bring in someone better for the division. I like Cudjoe but I doubt he'll want to stay.

Certainly we've got a few interesting months ahead.

[Dundee United 23/24]

5 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

Was great to finally overcome you last night, always feels like years in between victories but when they come, they're delightful.

Serious question, how has Goodwin kept his job? That squad should be scooshing the league. 

The thing is, other than one team they still kinda are. Raith's results have been statistically incredible (if you're the sort of person who believes in the relevance of xG) and they've managed to hang with us all the way.

And now that things are getting that little bit more serious, it looks like while they are holding their nerve, United under Goodwin are beginning to bottle it.

And as I say, if we bottle the league championship, we're never, ever getting up via the playoffs.

[Dundee United 23/24]

I don't so much have a problem with Goodwin picking the wrong team as  much as I do with him sticking with the wrong team until halftime when he'll have seen from the 20 minute mark that it wasn't working, and then coming out after the game to state that the game was lost in the first 45 minutes. 

Ogren is facing a dilemma which is that he wants to sell, and the price he'll get for it will be based on the division we're playing football in next season. He has a manager who has delivered him 2nd place minimum at this point, but who has shown he can't field a winning team when it's a high stakes match.

So does he a) stick with it and hope Goodwin will somehow get us automatic promotion, knowing that if he doesn't, the high likelihood is we'll lose the playoff or b) make that change and hope a better motivator could at least get us over the line in the playoffs?

[Dundee United 23/24]

We're at the stage where questions do have to be asked about Jim Goodwin, and he needs to reflect on his own tactical performance. I had heard - admittedly second hand - that the long and the short of his tactical instructions is "get it wide and cross it" (and yet we seem to rarely manage that at the moment).

As much as we all want products of our youth system to do well, Meekison and Mochrie looked absolutely miles off it last night. In part that's down to a lack of game time, but also it's down to team selection, tactics and their own drive and determination (you'd think Miller Thomson had played dozens of games for us compared to them). I think we might have got away with picking one of them, but not both. Instead, both now would be nowhere near the starting XI again for the remainder of the season.

It's not fair to blame them specifically though; the whole team - with the exception of Thomson and maybe the centre backs, although I don't know if one of them cost us the first goal - played like they were in a training game. They sauntered around like it was a foregone conclusion that we'd win somehow. Chief culprits for this were Watt and Middleton.

Middleton in particular just hides, yet he stayed on for the entire 90 mins.

I don't think we have the money - or a chairman who cares enough - to sack Goodwin, so we just have to hope Raith drop more points than us.

[Dundee United 23/24]

His free kick aside, I thought Moult was once again pretty poor today, and in spite of being due credit for scoring the second, Tillson's passing is absolutely appalling for a professional footballer.

Like every game we play, we dominated without doing a huge amount. I don't think there were any really good performances, although Gallagher returning adds some stability. Miller Thomson's corners were better than the norm, but I'm not going to go overboard and say he was 'superb' (as I've seen some say on X) because he wasn't. He's not a right back, and I wouldn't feel comfortable with him playing right back long term.

The one player I'd single out for praise is Cudjoe, simply because in a squad of players who like to hold up play and play sideways or backwards passes, he is direct and he tries stuff, and it makes a difference.

[Dundee United 23/24]

2 hours ago, ArabFC said:

Reading this forum - the opposite is clearly true. 

Firstly, I'll say I was a critic of the clown at the time - nothing to do with history.

Secondly, there was no 'having balls' involved in playing Gauld, Souttar and Robertson; yer half-blind grannie would have played them, because they were awesome.

In fact my argument at the time was we were probably playing them too much. Guys like Gauld needed a rest occasionally, but it wasn't until the great McDiarmid switcheroo that it finally happened when the clown swapped out half the team at the same time to predictable effect!

 

"Your half blind grannie would have played them" and yet Peter Houston didn't play Gauld and Souttar.

Under absolutely no circumstances would Houston have put those two on from the start - making their 3rd ever professional starts - in a semi final at Hampden against Celtic. It just wouldn't have happened. Both strolled it. At the time, there was a near on unanimous view that that was a ballsy move. And that's what I'm referring to.

Like I say, it ended  badly for him and that's what he's remembered for, but there was a point where things were good. Arguably things have never been anywhere near as good since.

[Dundee United 23/24]

Yeah, I think history has been unkind to Jackie McNamara. It all ended badly for him and he subsequently had a horrible time of it at York but he deserves credit for a number of things, including having the balls to play guys like Gauld, Souttar and Robertson at such a young age/level of experience, for clearly being the man who got the most out of Nadir Ciftci when he's never come anywhere close reaching those heights ever again, and for the great football we played under him at times.

Absolutely, player sales and recruitment in the latter part of his time with us was poor (the recruitment in the season we were relegated was simply unbelievable) but you can't only look at the negatives.

[Dundee United 23/24]

First time this season I've woken up angry about the previous day's game.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's been a single game this season where we've dropped points where we haven't been on top for large parts and just squandered opportunities (or at the very least, possession).

The whole lot of them need to wake up. Raith are a side who - if you look at the stats anyway - have punched above their weight. I believe that's now 19 points they've turned around this season with goals in the last 5 minutes. But they will continue to do that, so we have to go into games and look to have a cutting edge.

There's absolutely a tactical element involved here that Goodwin is culpable for, but Watt, Graham, Moult and Holt all wasted clear cut chances.

It feels as though the team believe that they'll win the league regardless, but to do that you do have to win games!

[Dundee United 23/24]

If Birighitti goes there then it just proves that he is Brutus Beefcake to Aziz Behich's Hulk Hogan.

Points if you understand the reference.

[Dundee United 23/24]

Fotheringham is a good player, but he shouldn't be undroppable. I'd like to see Cudjoe - who some supporters appear to have lost faith with purely because he's been out of sight and therefore out of mind for a while - given a shot again, or even Wotherspoon out at wide right and two up front in the next game.

Dunfermline - like a few other teams this season - quite rightly turned up to defend well and maybe hit us on the break, and while we have better players, those players don't seem to have the ability to break that type of tactic down. It's why I think we're better away from home; on their own patch teams actually try to win games.

Having said that, we still had the chances to win the game, so that combined with Raith self destructing, means I'm fair confident going in to this half of the season.

For transfer deadline day, I'm not really sure what I want us to bring in. The obvious thing to say would be a central defender, but he'd be 4th pick so who are we going to get on those terms? We've now got three strikers, 17 million attacking midfielders, three central midfielders (four if you include Grimshaw) but maybe only 1 good choice each side at fullback?

I suppose it all comes down to availability. If we're offered someone who can make a genuine difference to the first XI then we should take him, otherwise, why bring in someone for the sake of it.

[Dundee United 23/24]

On 21/01/2024 at 16:20, Derry Alli said:

Thankfully your club shelled out a significant amount and moved him half way across the globe just to lose game after game after game after game and be hilariously relegated with an astronomical wage bill.

You can always hold onto that fact, x.

To be fair I don't think that's true (the bit about us moving him half way around the globe, rather than the bit about us losing game after game and being relegated with an astronomical wage bill). I think he'd moved over here because his wife is from the UK and while he touted himself to clubs across the country, we were the ones mug enough to take him and then pay the fee his club in Australia wanted.

[Dundee United 23/24]

Glass and Mochrie are essentially the same player; decent technically but lacking in substance. Neither looks to have a natural position and though they have chipped in with a goal or two, you don't ever really think that they will change the game.

Our bench right now is so paper thin at the moment. 

Newman - mediocre young goalkeeper who you wouldn't want starting a game
Duffy - untested at this level. Did ok in League One but that's about it
Freeman - broken husk of a former footballer
Cudjoe - Hot and cold player who very rarely delivers off the bench
Mochrie - See above
Glass - See above
Macleod - Not good enough to get a game for the second worst team in League 2
Denham - Ragdolled by Spartans and Partick
Petrie - Who?

The narrative that United have this strength in depth that will see us over the line simply isn't true. Of that entire bench, I would imagine that Mochrie and Cudjoe would be the only two players who would regularly start in the league for another team. And I do include Glass in that considering how he couldn't get a game for the team who were relegated last season.

 

[Dundee United 23/24]

35 minutes ago, ArabianKnight said:

Send Tilson back to County.

Send Denholm back and use Bisland or O'Donnell (before we punt him) as back up RCB

Use Grimshaw as the back up midfielder.

Get a decent right back in.

Another striking option.

Punt Cudjoe to anyone that offers any money for him.

Get rid of Glass or Mochrie, probably Glass as he's had enough chances now.

Recall Chalmers and give him his final opportunity to show he can actually handle having the shirt on his back as it clearly plays on his mind.

 

That's about all I've got after today. Team didn't work at all today, would have been better with a back 3 I think.

 

I think Tilson is bang average but considering how lacking we are in depth, as it stands I'd keep him. I'd rather he was a bench option, but at least he is an option.

For me, if we assume that Wotherspoon is a done deal, the other changes we need to make are...

In - Striker, right footed experienced player who can play as a central defender or central midfielder (the fabled 'Butcher Type')

Out - Denham

Then beyond that it would be some like for like changes if players were to leave.

[Dundee United 23/24]

3 hours ago, ArabianKnight said:

So McLeod recalled from Forfar since he wasn't getting game time and someone on twitter saying his attitude was apparently stinking there.

Hopefully he gets put somewhere on loan where that gets sorted out and he starts getting on the score sheet then.

I know some of the Forfar players through work; both in terms of attitude and ability, he's been a big disappointment. There's been a few players who have gone on loan there from us over the years who have failed to impress because of attitude, but I think that's more a generational problem than a Utd one.

[Doctor Who]

Themes aren't the problem; the way it's written makes or breaks it.

The 'Doctor Who is now woke/Doctor Who has always been woke' debate reared its ugly head when Chris Chibnall was in charge, mainly because he was such a bad writer in Who (although he's clearly a capable writer at times - e.g. Broadchurch). Orphan 55 was the show at its worst with terrible, sledgehammer subtle lecturing. Compare that to the Green Death which was about pollution but not talking down to the audience.

I think RTD wrote the stuff with Rose in The Star Beast really well. It wasn't in your face, but it acknowledges that people out there get a hard time and also people in the older generations get stuff wrong in knowing how to be considerate around others. But it hardly took over the episode.

 

[Doctor Who]

It's good that there's a small haven where people are actually positive about the show. Twitter at the moment is an absolute cesspool (although maybe it's always been that way) with people - usually middle aged, white English or North American males - spouting 24/7 vitriol because they don't want a black gay man in the role.

The three specials were great and the Christmas episode was a positive start to the new era.

[Dundee United 23/24]

1 hour ago, Pull My Strings said:

Tidy for the first and two good finishes for the second and third but, those moments aside, I thought Watt was poor last night. Very poor closing down and tracking back. When he did get the ball it was either a first time hopeful flick or a simple pass backwards. No attempt to turn and run with the ball.  He looked like he was either carrying an injury or just couldn't be arsed. All forgiven, of course, because he did have those moments but I wouldn't be making changes to the team simply because he scored a few goals. In terms of overall performance and work rate Moult is still a much better option if available.

Have to say I totally disagree. Goals win games and he scored three of them. Moult has been very poor for a number of games now, missing good chances in a lot of them or simply not being in the right position to receive. A striker in form would have buried two chances he got last night.

Sometimes Watt can appear lazy and disinterested, but last night wasn't one of those nights, and when he's played up front he does score.

Which is not to say that Moult isn't a good option or even a better one when he's on form, but right now he's badly off the boil.

[Dundee United 23/24]

21 minutes ago, Fife Arab said:

Heard we have offered a contract to a winger playing in America. No clue on a name but it’s none of our ex players but has played in Scotland before, don’t have the energy to start digging Also seen someone on Facebook saying the Simon Murray rumours were “nonsense” This isn’t true heard he’s desperate to come. Also heard wotherspoon is being considered but injury’s dependent. 
 

no clue if any are done but certainly talks on going. 

For family reasons I suspect he'd much prefer to play in Dundee, but County aren't just going to let him walk away, so that's where the interest may have to end.

[Dundee United 23/24]

8 minutes ago, Sonam said:

How strong are these Simon Murray rumours? Would be a huge loss for County if it were to happen. Excellent attitude, runs for everything and scores and creates a fair amount of goals. Would be even better in the Championship. 

They are only strong because people keep repeating them. County will pay Murray a fair wedge and will be looking for a transfer fee. I think much like Decla Gallagher, Murray would rather play for a team in Dundee because he lives here, but it's not as simple as that.

[Dundee United 23/24]

Right now, United are defensively solid but can't score a goal for love nor money, in spite of creating chances (Tilson, Middleton, Moult and Cudjoe all should have scored last night). 

It's a frustrating watch that seems to be a combination of poor tactics and players out of form. Tactically, I thought that taking Tilson off for Glass for a disastrous move as it just let Queen's Park in and tbf they should have scored late on. I know Tilson is an easy target but he does play an important role when Docherty isn't playing. But apart from that sub, the tactics seemed to be "Put the ball forward", instead of playing to our strengths of getting the ball to the feet of the wingers.

In terms of poor tactics, Moult once again had a stinker. He should have buried that one from 6 yards out and although he's dropping deep, he's not doing much with it. And Tony Watt looked like he couldn't care less; he was going about like someone playing Walking Football at the DISC.

We're almost at the transfer window, and while I'm led to believe there's nothing in the Simon Murray transfer (he might want it, but County don't want to just let him leave) we desperately need another option up front. But Goodwin will know that.

And on Goodwin, I've seen a few calls for his sacking, but I think that's daft. While he might have got his tactics wrong last night and for whatever reason is allergic to cup competitions, he is doing a good job in the league and should be given the chance to develop the squad further in January.

 

[Dundee United 23/24]

Just now, ArabianKnight said:

The answer to this was clearly no sadly.

If any United supporter thinks Grimshaw is an upgrade on either Freeman or any other RB at the club today showed me why I had doubts a few games back about him.

Technically not the worst but he just does some infuriating stuff slowing the play down and today he seemed to me to make the wrong pass every time.

He does the stupid Smith-esque thing of checking the ball inside to the middle of the park rather than taking it direct or even doing a diagonal. Makes my blood boil.

He's not very good but he's not actively bad either. Much like Freeman, he's not exactly a dynamic wing back, but unlike Freeman, I don't have fear that we'll concede goals every game thanks to him.

[Dundee United 23/24]

Read a few tweets calling for Goodwin to go and someone calling Holt and Gallagher "Wage Thief's".

Think that's enough United twitter chat for the evening 

Thought it was a fairly even game decided by one moment of magic. We were poor but the major worries Moult's lack of form and the general lack of creativity.