Dundee United winger Gary Mackay-Steven believes European football is still within their grasp despite a heavy defeat at Celtic Park.
The Tangerines’ dismal record at the home of the Hoops continued on Tuesday as early promise failed to be turned into goals and Celtic eventually ran out comfortable 4-0 winners.
The best of United’s chances fell to Mackay-Steven, who was clean through on goal but could only shoot wide.
Despite the loss to the champions, Mackay-Steven is convinced seventh-placed United are still capable of not only making it into the top six in time for the SPL split but also qualifying for continental competition for what would be a fourth successive year.
“The beauty of football is that you can have good games and you can have bad ones and when you have a bad game you quickly have an opportunity to put it right,” said the Scotland under-21 star.
“We play Ross County at home on Saturday and that’s our chance to get back on track.
“So we will just get this out of the system, regroup and watch the video of the Celtic match together.
“We are taking it game by game and we’ll see where we end up.
“However, we have confidence in ourselves that we can still finish high up the league. We could even get into Europe that would be a bonus, but we are hoping to do that.”
Mackay-Steven has conceded he should have done better at Parkhead, when he played a one-two with Johnny Russell before racing clear, only to fire past the post when he looked certain to open the scoring for the Tangerines.
“I had a great chance myself and I should have done better,” he said. “I maybe had too much time.”
He continued: “It could have gone on to be a different game had I put that one away. It was just one of those things.
“I do need to add more goals to my game and I will be trying to be more clinical.
“When you go to Celtic Park you need to take control of the game if you can. We did try to do that and created chances.
“We were maybe a little bit unlucky to lose 4-0 but in the end Celtic showed their class.”