As is to be expected, Dundee United are refusing to concede anything in the contest for automatic promotion from the Championship.
After an agonising defeat at Livingston, though, if there is still a race for top spot in the second tier, it’s hard to argue the Tangerines remain involved in it.
Friday night’s 2-1 loss at the Tony Macaroni Arena means they trail runaway leaders St Mirren by a massive 17 points.
With just 13 games of the regular season to go it’s impossible to see how that gap can be closed.
And the harsh truth is that, on current form, the battle Csaba Laszlo’s team now face is to stay ahead of the teams below them and make sure they hang on for a play-off place.
A disastrous run of six league games since the end of December has produced just a single victory, against part-time Brechin.
The only other success during that period came in the Scottish Cup against League One Alloa — another part-time outfit.
That’s not a sequence that suggests this is a team capable of getting promotion even if, as should be the case, they do secure a place in the play-offs.
Right now, the most pressing question is where is the next win going to come from?
The chance to get one quickly will present itself tomorrow night when they run out at Tannadice to face Queen of the South.
Particularly on their own patch, that’s a fixture that’s proved tricky in recent times and, if a needed three points are to be taken, there is no question United will have to turn in a more complete performance than they managed at Livi.
With Ryan Hardie’s winner for the home side coming in injury time, there was a feeling in the away dressing-room they’d been hard done by.
Given what had been an improved display after the break, it was easy to understand why.
United had battled hard in that second half to cancel out Stephen Robinson’s first-half opener.
After much huffing and puffing they eventually did thanks to a fine strike from substitute Matty Smith with just 15 minutes left.
Between then and Hardie’s heartbreaking, if spectacular, strike, it had been the visitors who looked the more likely to go on and take the points.
But for a fantastic stop by veteran goalkeeper Neil Alexander to deny Stewart Murdoch, they would have edged ahead.
While, though, this was a game that could have been won, timing apart it was hard to argue that if anyone deserved to it was Livi.
They dominated the first half and might easily have been further ahead by the break.
United’s improvement in the second period made it a more even contest but the home side continued to look threatening.
In the end, for Laszlo it was about trying to take some crumb of comfort from the play in the second half.
He felt it was good enough to have earned victory and is convinced if his team can keep playing that way, they can get back to winning form.
“I think the boys tried really hard the second half, created chances and scored a goal. I was very confident that we could win the game,” he said.
“And we had the chance to win and the goalkeeper saved. After came their goal and it was painful to lose.
“I can’t even talk that we didn’t have the fighting spirit because the team did everything they could to get three points.”
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