After the disappointing 3-1 defeat at the hands to Inverness Caley Thistle on Saturday, our shocking record against the Highlanders extended to eighteen matches without a league win against them.
It was a hugely disheartening result for the fans and without question the club as the team were looking for their first ever win at the Tulloch Stadium to ease the pressure that seems to be mounting with each passing game.
As soon as we found ourselves three down, the comments started to come through from disgruntled fans. Once the final whistle went it felt more like a tsunami as people criticised the team, formation and the man who decides it all, Paul Hartley.
Quite a lot of these comments were calling for Hartley to leave the club or be sacked. Some were saying we would be relegated, that the season was done and dusted. All this after only seven games.
Everyone is allowed their opinion and I can respect anyone who has a different one to myself but I do genuinely feel that there has been a knee jerk reaction from some of the fans.
Would you sack a manager with three big and equally tough games coming up?
Would you potentially cause upset within the ranks of the players by sacking their boss so early in the season?
Would you leave a team without a manager during a crucial period while you go searching for a new one?
Of course, a huge majority of fans can turn around and claim that leaving it too late could see us slip further down the table and by the time a change is made it may be too late. For everything I have said above, fans will have another way of looking at it. It is a horrible situation to be in, fans are arguing with each another on what they feel is best for the club but I can fully understand where each of them are coming from with their opinions.
Hartley deserves the chance to turn it around and the notion of punting him at this time should not even be entertained. However, I do not feel that the formation he sets out to play at the moment is any good with the players we have, so he has to ring the changes if he wants things to improve. He has had a moan in the papers at the critics but even he can surely see that what he is putting out on the field is not working. Could it be that since he has been criticised, he is being a little stubborn by not changing the formation in the hope it clicks and he proves everyone wrong? If it is he needs to give himself a shake.
We have been in tougher situations and turned it around. I remember our first season up in the SPL in 1998 when we went through a worse start than this and managed to finish fifth in the league, our best position in the top league since the sixties!
What we need to do now as fans is to band together and get right behind the team and give them our full backing. I was at the Players Sponsors Dinner on Sunday night and the players that I spoke to never shied away from what is happening on the field and pulled no punches when they said it was simply not good enough. You can tell when speaking to them that they want to do better and not one of them are going on the field to intentionally play bad. They are hurting just as much as anyone because performances and results are o’t going their way.
Of course, if results continue the way they are, in due time it would have to be looked at what else we can do to turn it around. In the meantime, we should show a bit of faith in the manager that got us over the finishing line into the Premiership, overachieved by guiding us to the top six in our first season back and then missed out on a back to back top six finishes on the last game before the split in what is often described by pundits and managers as that ‘difficult second season.’ His cup record has a lot to be desired, especially with all the talk in the paper but for me, it has always been about the league.
We now have a run of games involving Celtic at home, then Hearts and St Johnstone away. There seems to be a genuine fear among some that we will be looking at three straight defeats here. Of course, basing this on form, they have every right to think so but we have to shrug off that type of thinking and get right behind the team.
First up we take on Celtic at Dens Park this Saturday in the lunch time kick off live on Sky Sports. It’s never ideal that when you are on a bad run of form that you have to tackle the Champions of Scotland but that’s the cards you’re dealt and you have to just get on with it.
We did well against Celtic last term with back to back draws and clean sheets and even though the odds would be stacked against us repeating these results this time around, the players will walk onto that field knowing that everyone and their granny will be expecting the Dee’s to be beaten soundly.
They could use this to their advantage. By that I mean they can go out there without any pressure as there are no expectations that we will get a result here. Put in a gutsy display and give their all and they will have the backing of the crowd in acknowledgement that they gave 110% and it will give the whole team a much needed lift for the coming games.
MON THE DEE!
