Well, I was not expecting that.
I thought that Saturday’s game with Motherwell would end with us having all three points but how wrong was I. This 3-1 defeat has made what a good few fans had already been predicting for the past few weeks. As of now, we are in a relegation play-off fight.
When you look at it, we are only two wins off from moving to fifth in the table but as of this week, we could potentially be one defeat from plummeting to eleventh in the table. Of course the odds are in our favour of this happening due to the team Kilmarnock and Motherwell are playing and our goal difference on them. This though, is a sad state of affairs when it only seems like a few weeks ago that we were counting how many points we were away from third place.
Where has it all gone wrong so far?
Too many draws have contributed in a big way as is failing to beat teams with ten men when we were in front. There has been a few questionable tactics and formations put out by the gaffer which has not helped. The fans are crying out for a bit of width in the team and despite having Ricardo Calder on loan from Aston Villa who can bring that to the team, it would seem he is wasting away on the bench while we struggle on the field.
One thing I would call for from the gaffer to change is to bulk up the midfield. All season it would seem that we are losing the battle in this position and it could very well be our downfall if we do not rectify it.
We head into a very crucial part of the season and the run in could not of been worse. Saturday’s defeat has just made the visit from Hamilton a must win game for me now. After that we travel to Ross County and then have Celtic at home. We do not have a very good record against either of them so my head is telling me that these will be defeats. This makes three points against Hamilton that much more crucial. Then we have the Dundee derby up last. This one I do not want to call.
United may be languishing at the bottom and struggling just as bad as us but I have watched some of their highlights and they have improved drastically since Mixu Paatelainen took over. Yes, they are still getting beaten and losing silly goals but the amount of chances they are creating is scary. Against our defence at the moment, they could very well do the same. If we can pick up a win on Saturday and maybe a point in the Highlands, I will feel more confident going into this game but with both clubs at the bottom of the form table, I would not bet against either of the teams going into the derby on a high.
Heading back to the Hamilton game, we really need to come out all guns blazing and to get the first goal. Too many times we are the ones to surrender the lead and give ourselves a mountain to climb but this has to change now!
A few sources from Dens Park whispered that the teams Christmas night out in Belfast after the game was cancelled and they were told to get in for training Monday morning instead. This is a very big call from the gaffer but to quote a fellow Dundee fan who I spoke to about this, the decision is ‘Quite right. The team is in free fall at the moment’. This seems to be the generally feeling from the fans who have been posting on social media about this.
The calls for the managers head has grown a bit of motion since Saturday and I will admit, I did give it a thought while having a few beverages that night. I quickly changed that thought though as us as a club are too quick to get rid of managers. As of right now, this is just a bad spell we are going through. Some people might throw a statistic that he has only won five in thirty or so games but to me, the only statistics we should be looking at are this season. To include last season you are including five to six defeats in which half of the squad were told they were surplus to requirements.
That is where we are right now. The fans have started to get restless and we have a very tough end of year run in of games. If we pick up some wins here and get our season back on track, the last few results will become a distance memory. If we do not manage to do so, it is not what I want to think about just now.
