From the worst moment of a season to one of the best within three days – Dundee are as unpredictable a side as they come.
Just when it looks like they are finding their feet in the Premiership once more, they are knocked on their backside with a horrendous performance out of nowhere.
And just as suddenly, the Dark Blues get themselves back on track at St Mirren 72 hours later with their first away win of the season.
On top of the points was an away clean sheet. Coming on the back of a 5-0 hiding, it raises some questions.
So, just what was changed between the two vastly-different performances?
Frontline
The most noticeable change from manager James McPake was who he selected to lead the line.
Leigh Griffiths is the star man, Jason Cummings is the top scorer but both were dropped.
Cillian Sheridan was the choice by the manager and quickly set about proving his boss right.
Sheridan ran the channels, occupied St Mirren’s back three and was a physical presence.
More notably he was much more involved than Griffiths against Ross County.
The Celtic loanee played 90 minutes against the Staggies and touched the ball 24 times. Sheridan only played 56 minutes due to his injury but made 27 touches.
Part of that comes from service up to a striker but Griffiths won only one duel of eight in his game and no aerial battles while Sheridan won eight of 17 duels and seven of 15 in the air.
Largely that boils down to a striker getting his team up the park more.
Midfield
He was, though, given much more help from the middle of the park than Griffiths in the previous game.
The biggest tactical change from the manager came in midfield.
Against Ross County, Paul McGowan was the man sitting deepest with Charlie Adam and Jordan McGhee in front.
In Paisley, McGowan was pushed right up in behind Sheridan in the No 10 role with Adam deepest and Max Anderson running between.
And McGowan was much more influential – against County, the 34-year-old made only one pass in the final third compared with 10 against the Buddies.
Attitude
Clearly from their performance, the attitude of the Dark Blues was a step up in intensity between the two matches.
And that is borne out by the stats.
Dundee made twice as many tackles, winning nine of 14 against St Mirren after making only seven tackles against County.
They won more duels – 58% compared to less than 50% in the previous game – and more aerial challenges – 57% compared to 50%.
And they restricted St Mirren far more than Ross County as a defensive outfit.
The Staggies had 34 touches in Dundee’s box on Wednesday night while the Buddies were cut to just 19.
For real stats nerds, the expected goals metric (which measures the quality of chance created from zero to one) for Ross County in midweek was 1.79 while St Mirren’s was down to 0.82.
Dundee also upped theirs from a very low 0.36 to 1.11 on Saturday.
Cutting through all that, Dundee were far improved all over the park.
Players upped their game but a tactical tweak also brought more from the team.
And with it, points and positivity from despair and dismay.
