| Such a statement may seem an unlikely follow on from the highlighting of those two facts, but today the Tangerines gaffer remained 100% confident of his team’s ability to finish high up the top flight.
Saturday saw United go down 2-1 at Hibs, to leave them with just two points from the opening five fixtures.
Rather than press the panic button, though, Craig has gone out of his way to stress how well he feels his team are playing and express his belief they will come good.
“I have complete faith in the players to do the job and, right now, what we must do is stick together and keep doing what we believe in,” he said.
“Of course I am disappointed we haven’t won yet, but, if I look at the games we’ve had so far, I’d say we have five points less than we might have and, over the course of a season, that is not a lot.
“If we keep playing the way we are, I am confident that ground will be made up. We’ve had a difficult start and Saturday sees the end of a run of five out of our first seven games being away from home and one of the two home games was against Celtic.
“The up side of that is after Saturday we have five of seven at home and, if we keep playing like we are, that is an opportunity to pick up points.”
He believes the trip to Aberdeen is as well and, just as importantly, knows his players are of the same view.
“I don’t need to tell the players they are playing well — they know it, too. If you take our last two games, we have had goodness knows how many chances, while both Hibs and Kilmarnock had just two efforts on target and scored with both.
“Looking at Saturday, in particular, I can honestly say that was the best performance I’ve been involved in at Easter Road as a player or a manager.
“We got beat, though, and sometimes you get runs like that in football. Now people who have not seen us will look at the league and say we are in trouble, but I don’t believe that because I know how hard the players are working and how well they are playing.
“People will also say Aberdeen becomes a must-win game for us. As much as I want to win it and it’s an important game, I don’t see it that way because if we keep playing like we are, over the season we will be as successful as we want to be.”
United will go to Pittodrie without on-loan striker Roy O’Donovan and, almost certainly, his fellow-frontman Warren Feeney, who missed Hibs with an ankle problem.
“Roy has hurt his hamstring and if it isn’t torn it is severely strained, and I don’t see Warren being back until next week.”
This afternoon, the reserves were in action against Motherwell at Bathgate. |
