DUNDEE UNITED captain Jon Daly does not think he is needed as emergency cover, despite a question mark continuing to hang over their defence.
At Tynecastle on Sunday the Tangerines showed once again that if they can only cut out the blunders at the back they can be as good as any team in the SPL, with the probable exception of Celtic.
That was a point made by manager Peter Houston after the 2-1 defeat and it was hard to argue as they passed the Jam Tarts off the park while chasing the match.
Dodgy defending had cost them the first goal when Brian McLean failed to deal with a high ball, then they conceded a penalty when Willo Flood hauled back Dylan McGowan.
That left them with too much work to do, as it turned out, with Keith Watson’s fine second-half strike a mere consolation for a power of work from the United players.
The experienced Daly retreated from the frontline to the back earlier this season to add some calm and composure but the Irishman does not think he will be needed to do the same again.
While admitting to being frustrated that the team keeps handing the initiative to the opposition, Daly thinks it can be sorted out starting with today’s home game against St Johnstone.
Asked if he thought he would be asked to help, he replied: “Hopefully not.
“I am a centre forward and I see myself as such. We do have enough centre-backs and defenders at the club to be able to stop the goals going in.
“I just think we need to work a bit harder on the training park and make sure we give ourselves the best opportunity to win matches.
“It is something that we need to address and we need to address it quickly.
“The games are coming thick and fast now and we don’t want to find ourselves falling behind.
“Hopefully, that starts when we face St Johnstone.
“We are playing some good stuff and creating chances. We are always confident that we can score goals.
“We have plenty of players in our team that can produce so it is just case of cutting out the slackness at the back, which is costing us at the moment.
“We shot ourselves in the foot again in the Hearts game. It was the same old story. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb by giving away two sloppy goals.
“I think we had enough of the ball and enough chances to go on and win the game.
“Never mind a point, we should have probably got the three points. However, we came away with nothing.”
Daly is looking forward to facing Saints but warned that the Perth men are more than capable of punishing any more slack play at the back.
“I haven’t seen an awful lot of St Johnstone this season but I do know they are a decent side with plenty of experience in their ranks,” he said.
“If we keep giving silly goals away then they will punish us. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Manager Peter Houston seemed to hint that Daly would be staying in attack.
“He is at the top of the scoring charts already with eight goals,” said Houston. “Individual errors have cost us and there are things we have to cut out.”
iroache@thecourier.co.uk