Dundee Pointless And Bottom After Three Games

With our usually reliable Dundee correspondent missing in action this past week, fellow Dee fan Gary Cocker took up the mantle in his absence to tell a familiar story.


Before I begin, I should apologise to all you Palace fans. After a terrific opening day win against Fulham, you might be wondering why you’ve lost two on the bounce, and it’s my fault.

I recently got married, and on the way back from honeymoon we had six or seven hours free in London before our train up north. I spotted the signing day at the Puma store on Carnaby Street, and like an overgrown child with a far-too-understanding wife, made my way along to bask in the glow of Patrick van Aanholt, Christian Benteke, Max Meyer, Cheikhou Kouyaté and Luka Milivojevic.

After waiting in line with some seven year olds and people queueing to have stuff signed for their seven year olds, I collected as much scrawled-on memorabilia as I could, grabbed a selfie with Patrick and bounced off, unaware that I had left behind my hometown team’s inability to win a game of football.

I have tickets to the Newcastle United home game in September, so please remind me to lift the hex while I am down!​

Anyway, on to Dundee. To be honest, I could copy and paste any one of Danny’s articles this season and everything would ring true. It is Groundhog Day for us – each week we start off relatively brightly, maintain possession, have one or two half-chances and then collectively shit the bed after somebody forgets the basics of football and offers up an easy goal to our opponents. This week, it was the turn of newly-crowned captain Josh Meekings to forget how to spring an offside trap in our game against St Johnstone, as he lurked 5-10 yards deeper than everybody else to allow Tony “I scored against Barcelona once” Watt to slot home the only goal of the game. ​
With forty minutes left to play, you would think that the team would demonstrate some sort of urgency or passion to at least try to roar back and claim our first point of the season, but it was insipid stuff. With the Perth side going for the jugular and trying to score a second to finish us off – as if they were scared of us scoring – we had numerous opportunities to counter-attack, but it’s like our players have had a chip installed which forces them to slow down and pass the ball sideways the minute we’re over the halfway line, which only adds to the frustration of the fans.​
Our achilles heel all season has been our lack of any sort of firepower up top. We signed a young Finnish striker, Benjamin Kallman, who is known for being pretty lethal in the box, but since we’ve signed him we’ve gone from creating tonnes of chances and not scoring any to creating none at all, as we delude ourselves into thinking we’re Barcelona and can patiently probe around the 16 yard box and wait for a goal to fall into our ever-so-talented laps.
Is it any wonder the fans are turning?​
As the team were booed off the pitch, thoughts turned to next week’s game against Motherwell, in which defeat would surely spell the end of Neil McCann’s time as Dundee boss. Yes, he has only just got a squad he can really call his own now that the 27-year contracts being handed out by our previous manager to duds have been sorted out; yes, a new manager would be left with his squad and it could perpetuate short-termism, and perhaps football teams are a bit quick to cut their losses. ​
However, I can’t forget that the gaffer stated at the start of summer that bolstering our forward options was a priority, yet we’ve said goodbye to four and signed two – one in the last week or so – and after five games against teams in the top two tiers we’ve only scored once. Like our last manager, McCann has talked himself into a corner with promises which only heighten expectations and therefore disappointment. There are ongoing rumours we’ll sign a few wide players (mainly for the left hand side) and another striker before our window shuts on 31st August, but nobody is holding their breath. ​
The definition of insanity is attempting the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and that sums us up so far this season. Opposition managers know they’ll reap rewards from bombing down the flanks against our narrow formation, know how plodding we are with the ball, and are more than happy for us to aimlessly shift the ball side to side. They know that our manager’s dogmatic attachment to playing it out from the back will mean that a high press will eventually turn up a few chances. They know that a tactical shift in the second half won’t be matched by one from our dugout, and that our (in)famously impatient fans will get on the team’s back and cause a vicious downward spiral in confidence and form.
Our rivals know that going a goal up is all they need to do to break us. The pundits know that we’re toothless up top and shoddy at the back. Our own fans know that something needs to change. The only people who don’t seem to know it are those in charge, who need to think long and hard about just how patient they can be with a novice manager without any sign of reward on the horizon and with the threat of relegation looming.
The board are just as (in)famously patient as our fans are impatient, giving McCann’s predecessor a few games after a 7-0 pumping at home to Aberdeen before finally relenting to fan pressure, and it’s unclear whether that usually admirable character trait has grown or not over the last few years. Given how strongly they’ve backed his overhaul of the squad, it does frustratingly seem unlikely that they’ll part ways this side of Christmas unless our abject form continues and fans vote with their feet.​
Of course, if we lose to Motherwell on Saturday, there’s a good chance we’ll be four points adrift of everybody after four games. It’s a jarring statistic, and far from ideal, but it’s also salvageable. The apologists – who, thankfully, are dwindling in number – insist that nice passing triangles and a “philosophy” don’t come without a price and we need to give the new players time to bed in. However, many of the moderate “happy clappers” (such as myself) have lost all patience with the team, and feel the threat of being isolated by Christmas is enough to call for a change.
The current squad (forward line aside) has its merits and shouldn’t be in a relegation dogfight this season, which only adds to the sense that a change of manager rather than a change of personnel is the solution. If it sounds similar to the mercifully short-lived Frank de Boer era at Palace, that’s because it is.
Whether or not we can find our own Roy Hodgson to dredge us out of the muck is another matter entirely.​
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