Imagination was lacking in last night’s goalless draw at St Mirren but Dundee United boss Micky Mellon will take pragmatism if the Terrors continue to rack up points.
United played out their third stalemate in the last four games in foggy conditions in Paisley. However, they are unbeaten in that run and remain fifth in the Premiership standings.
It wasn’t pretty at times going forward but Mellon insists he is pleased to see his side doing what’s necessary at the other end of the pitch.
“It was another hard-earned point, a clean sheet on the road and those are the positives but we want to get better all the time,” he said.
“We need to be better with the football and I felt, at times, we lacked that wee bit of calmness to make three or four passes to get us up the pitch.
“The frontmen’s quality is there but was the movement imaginative enough? Was it good enough? Probably not.
“When you’re playing like that and you know you’re not being good enough with the ball, it’s important you do the necessaries at the other end of the pitch.
“That’s defend your 18-yard box like we did, really, really well and gained another important clean sheet.”
Elements didn’t put dampener on United’s evening
Between the misty elements and the display of referee David Munro, Tangerines gaffer Mellon endured a frustrating evening at St Mirren Park.
However, the former Tranmere Rovers boss was pleased to see his side stick to their task.
He added: “At times there were crosses coming in where I didn’t know and just seen somebody in the box heading it.
“It was like that but we stuck away at our task and we move on.
“It’s a difficult job for referees but some of them I didn’t really get.
“But that’s football. It’s difficult for them to get everything right and we’ll all shout for every decision and want it but that’s not always going to happen.”
United sit on 17 points from 14 games and Mellon admits he is happy with that total but says the squad aren’t setting themselves targets – just taking each game as it comes.
He added: “It’s important, absolutely – that’s what we lacked three, four, five games ago. Before this little run we’d have lost those games.
“It’s important you battle it out and make sure that everybody understands we want to get better with the ball.
“When you’re not hitting the levels that you want and expect to hit, it’s important you keep it nil at the other end as long as you possibly can to give yourself a chance and they’re doing that at the minute.
“We’re ticking the points over, we want to get better all the time and we’ll just keep going.”
Points are totting up but Tangerines have set no target
Asked if they are setting targets, Mellon continued: “Not really. We just want to get better and keep improving all the time.
“There’s things already I thought that we’d sorted but I looked last night and thought we need to keep going with that and be aggressive in improvements.
“We’ll keep going at that and banging away at it. If we keep getting clean sheets we’ll give ourselves a chance in every game.”
St Mirren 0-0 Dundee United: Tangerines battle to a point in the Ferguslie fog