Well, hello to everyone. It seems like a long time since I have written something about Dundee for TEB.
I have been away getting married so I would like to thank all of the team at TEB and also all their followers over in the land of Twitter for all the nice messages. The ones urging me ‘not to do it, you will thank me in five years time’, that was nice of you but I passed on your advice!
When I came back I heard about TEB website being hacked. It is great that Jay and the team have managed to get up and running again and with a fancy new logo for the ‘relaunch’ of the site. There is nothing worse than someone hacking something you have spent so long building up.
Let us get back on topic now so on to Dundee.
We headed up North to play Aberdeen last Friday in a game that I was not overly confident about. Yes, we had just taken apart an in-form Partick Thistle team the week before but there is something about Dundee and Pitodrie (Aberdeen’s home ground) that does not fill me with hope.
It would become apparent that my instincts would be correct as the Dons would control the bulk of the game and even though we did create one or two chances, they would see this game out comfortably.
Scott Bain would do his best to cement himself as one of the best goalkeepers in Scotland as he saved most of what Aberdeen threw at him. Some of the saves were at point blank range and even for their goal he was unlucky not to claw it away. At the final whistle, Aberdeen were deserving of their win and Dundee lucky it was not more than defeat by a single goal.
We managed to dodge a potential cup upset midweek when we took care of high flying Falkirk at Dens Park in the Scottish Cup. This was the third attempt at playing this game after heavy rainfall and parts of the drainage system breaking down, rendered a section of the pitch unplayable.
I had to do with listening to the game on the radio while at work and I can tell you it was nervy stuff. Even after scoring the opening goal, Falkirk responding straight away and that got me thinking that it would not be our night.
Fortunately, we grabbed two goals in the second half to kill off the game and send us into the last sixteen of the cup with our reward being a trip to Dumbarton. A quarter-final place should really be in the bag but with this being Dundee, a sure thing is never a sure thing!
This Saturday we welcome Motherwell back to Dens. We beat them comfortably up here last time around but they managed to extract revenge when we went to Fir Park in December. Their form has dipped of late but this one is sure to still be a tough tie.
Like most of the articles I have written, a win would see us pull away from the dreaded play-off spot but a defeat would bring us a good few steps closer. I will continue to emphasise that I feel we have too much quality in this team to be near the bottom but consistency has been something that has let us down by the bucket load this season.
Motherwell’s form is a bit hit and miss since Mark McGhee took over and with them on a two game losing run just now and Dundee coming off a morale boosting cup win, I will stick my neck out and predict a 3-1 win for the Dee.
